The Purple Banana Hammock
by TheFicChick
Summary: Like most women, I always found Speedos to be equal parts hilarious and horrifying. That all changed the day I saw Edward Cullen wearing one.
1. The Purple Banana Hammock

**The Purple Banana Hammock**

**Summary: **Like most women, I always found Speedos to be equal parts hilarious and horrifying. That all changed the day I saw Edward Cullen wearing one.

**Rating:** M. For gratuitous speculation about pork-swords and the eventual whipping out of one.

**Disclaimer: **If I owned them, I'd keep a certain sparkly emo vampire handcuffed to my headboard. Alas, I do not. (Also, I did not attend Northwestern; the details herein are a combination of artistic license and Google search results.)

_*This is un-betaed, so any and all mistakes are mine. That said, I'm looking for a beta for some other pieces (one-shots as well as multi-chapters), so if any experienced betas are interested, please let me know.*_

* * *

"Speedo padding on the swim team?" I muse, scanning the last few lines of the document open on my screen for typos.

"Actually, that's a good one," Angela muses from behind an enormous iMac. "Though I can say, having done extensive first-hand research, that at least one member of the team needs to do no such thing."

I roll my eyes as I click "save" and eject my jump drive. "Angela, I really don't want to know about what Ben may or may not be packing in his swimsuit."

"Oh, he's packing plenty," the disembodied voice mutters with a chuckle.

"Too. Much. Information."

"Where are we on the profile of the new Trustee?" she asks as she switches gears and dons her figurative editor's cap.

"Done and ready for next week," I reply. "Rose is getting the head shot; copy's in your inbox."

"Great. What about the tuition hike?"

"Waiting on a call back from the president," I reply.

"A return call that will be a long time coming."

"Don't I know it," I mutter, logging out of the network and powering down for the night.

"Do you think we'd get away with it?" she asks absently after a moment, punctuating the question with an audible click of the mouse.

It takes me a beat to realize she's referring to my only marginally serious suggestion for the weekly "Lighter Side" column and shrug, even though she can't see me. "Not much they can do once the story runs, is there?"

"You're devious." Knowing Angela like I do, I have no doubt that her comment is more compliment than admonishment. "You want to take the lead on that one?"

"No." My answer is instantaneous, and I flush when her amused eyes find mine from around the side of her monitor, her lips twisting and one skeptical eyebrow quirked over the rim of her violet tortoiseshell glasses.

"Methinks thou doth protest," she taunts, disappearing back behind the behemoth screen and clicking her mouse once more.

"I really think a story like that belongs in the hands of someone who has a little more first-hand knowledge of the… subjects. Like Jessica."

"Bite me," comes the response from a few computers down, and I spin in my wheeled chair to smirk at her.

"Just think of it, Jess. You could finally put all that 'field reporting' to good use with a story. In-depth background research at its finest, and most useful. You'd be doing the ladies of Northwestern a service." I punctuate "field reporting" with air-quotes, and Jessica flips me the bird.

"Crowley: not padding. Newton: definitely padding. Or should be, if he isn't. I can offer no further details on any of the rest of them," she spits.

Angela's head appears around the side of her screen once again, both eyebrows arched this time. "What about Edward Cullen?"

Jessica flushes slightly. "I have no first-hand knowledge." Her face is bathed in a soft bluish glow as she returns her focus to the screen before her. "Not for a lack of trying on my part," she adds in a mutter, and Angela snorts while I giggle. "I think he might be gay," she continues, heaving a tragic sigh.

"I have it on very good authority that he's not," Angela argues, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms over her head; the crack of her spine is audible in the large space that constitutes the newsroom of the Northwestern University student paper.

Jessica glares at her and pops her gum. "Lauren's a liar," she says after a moment. "She never slept with him, unless you count crashing on his bed with him after he'd already passed out drunk."

My head is following the conversation with the dedicated back-and-forth of a Wimbledon spectator and comes to rest on Angela, who rises from her chair and disappears into the small office reserved for the editor-in-chief, which she uses more for storage purposes than actual work; she says that she prefers to be among the "worker bees," and she's not even half-kidding. She grabs a camera from atop the filing cabinet behind her desk, packs it into its padded carry case and winds the strap around her shoulder, flicking the light switch to throw her small office into darkness. "Sounds like this should definitely be a collaborative effort," she muses. "Girls, it's all yours."

"Wait a second," I say, at the same moment Jessica interjects with, "No freaking way."

"Problem?" Angela pauses on the far side of the long conference table that occupies the middle of our newsroom and is usually peppered with empty boxes from Dunkin Donuts and a smorgasbord of the various other junk food offerings that fuel the deadline-driven.

"You can't seriously be entertaining the idea of running a story on," here, Jessica's normally borderline-shrill voice drops to a near-whisper, "_penises._"

"It's 'The Lighter Side,'" Angela defends, referring to the regularly ridiculous, often satirical, and sometimes borderline depraved weekly column that graces our Op-Ed pages and has landed us in hot water on more than one occasion. It comes as no surprise, given our target audience of college undergrads, that it's the most popular column on campus. "It'll be a hit, and it'll be the first time we've run anything sports-related on the Op-Ed page, which is also worth doing."

"And you think penis size is the appropriate way to cut that ribbon?" My tone leaves no doubt as to my misgiving.

"I do." Angela pulls her car keys from her satchel bag. "And it's yours." As we both open our mouths to protest once more, she holds up her hand. "Jess, you have the inside track – so to speak – and Bella, having never fooled around with any swimmers, gives it the credibility we wouldn't have if you and Lauren were on it together. Unless, Bella, there's something you've neglected to mention?"

The roll of my eyes is all the answer she needs, grinning as she makes her way to the door. "Great. We're obviously not going to have any art for this one, so I'm thinking a team shot? It would be in remarkably poor taste to run close-ups of their Speedo-clad junk, I'd imagine."

"In worse taste than speculating about the penile lengths of the entire team?" I argue, increasingly sorry for my smart-ass suggestion.

"Absolutely. Check the sports schedule taped to the side of Adam's computer; I'm pretty sure they have a couple of home meets this week. You can go to one and we'll run it ahead of the next one. And check with Rosalie to see if she has a team shot archived. Good luck!" With that, our fearless editor disappears into the normally bustling hallway that is all but deserted due to the hour, and Jessica and I gape at each other.

"Nice one, Bella. Not only do we have to go to a swim meet, but we're probably going to get reamed by the administration."

My eyes roll, despite the fact that I'm no more comfortable with our new assignment than she is. "You aren't a real _Daily _reporter until you've been chewed out by the dean at least once," I say, with far more bravado than I feel. "The man practically has Angela and me on speed-dial." It's not an exaggeration; while I have received the occasional call from Dean Pritchett, Angela hears from the man at least once a week. Given how rarely she's actually home I usually field the calls, and it's reached the point where I can tell who's on the line before he speaks just from the weary sigh that precedes his greeting. Rising from my chair, I cross the small space to look at the winter sports schedule. "Yep. Home meet tomorrow."

Jessica's nose wrinkles in at attempt at affronted distaste. "I can't believe she actually expects us to do background by spending hours staring at a bunch of cocks," she huffs. If I didn't know her I'd think she was genuinely insulted, but since I do know her, a grin stretches across my face.

"Like you don't do that in your down-time anyway. At least now you have a legitimate excuse."

"Bite me," she says again, and I laugh as I shrug into my coat.

"See you at the pool," I toss over my shoulder as I leave.

* * *

The smell of chlorine hits me like a wall when I enter the Norris Aquatics Center, and as I step inside I shrug out of my winter coat, the air warm and damp around me. Purple and white flags stretch across the pool and purple and white lane dividers bob gently on the surface of the water. Banners with the Northwestern logo and the Big 10 conference seal adorn the walls and the diving platforms, and the mascot bares its teeth at me from another flag on the wall behind the bleachers. A quick perusal of the stands finds Jessica sitting near the top; for all her protestations, she appears to be taking her assignment to heart, studying her subjects with single-minded concentration despite the fact that most of them are still wearing pants over their… points of interest.

"You know, it wasn't until this exact moment that I realized how truly unfortunate it is that our mascot is named Willie," I say without preamble as I dump my messenger bag on the bench and lower myself to sit beside her.

"Or entirely fitting," she replies, eyes still trained on the prize. "You'll admit that it lends itself to any number of clever headlines."

"Clever bordering on cheesy," I amend, peeling my sweater off over my head to leave me in a green long-sleeved thermal top, the sleeves of which I immediately roll up my forearms. "Seriously, it's like ninety degrees in here."

"At least we won't have to worry about shrinkage," she says absently, and I snort out a laugh.

"Not until after they dive in, anyway."

"You know, I wasn't a huge fan of the movie _Juno_, but 'pork swords' is certainly an apt moniker," she observes as Eric Yorkie slides his warm-up pants down his legs and begins stretching his quad muscles.

"Though perhaps not for Max Schulberg," I argue, and after a beat she rolls her eyes in response.

"Fine, if we're going to attempt to be culturally sensitive, we'll refer to his as a 'schlong.'"

Almost at once the absurdity of our conversation – and, by extension, the absurdity of what we're doing – hits me, and I face her. "Are we seriously about to write an op-ed speculating on the genitals of the men's swim team?"

Blue eyes find mine. "I guess cultural sensitivity is kind of rendered null and void in the face of general journalistic depravity, huh?"

"I'd say so."

We fall into amiable silence as a few more members of the team begin shedding their warm-up suits like snakeskin and stretching, bodies taut and muscled, shoulders flexing and backs arching. And, of course, royal purple Speedos gleaming under the buzzing fluorescents. I tear my eyes away momentarily, attempting to gather my nerve and my wits, and my gaze drifts over the electronic scoreboard before flitting to the records board; I am surprised to see Edward Cullen's name beside the 400-meter individual medley.

"Edward Cullen is a record-holder?" I ask Jessica, impressed despite my complete lack of interest in athletics in general and swimming in particular.

She looks at me like I've lost my mind. "Bella, we ran a full-length sports feature on the guy last winter when he set that record; where the hell were you?"

I frown. Granted, I don't really read the sports pages unless I'm proofing them, but even I'm surprised I managed to miss something that's clearly a big deal. "I have no idea," I admit.

"He's close to breaking Olsen's record for the 200-meter butterfly, too," she says, her eyes dancing over the swimmers mulling about on the far side of the pool until they settle, presumably on the object of our discussion. "People say he'll do it by the Big Ten Championships."

Admittedly, I'm impressed. While my lack of knowledge about sports is surpassed perhaps only by my utter lack of interest, I am nevertheless somewhat awed by the apparent superiority of a classmate I've never met. "Which one is he?" I ask Jessica, and I can feel her stare without turning my head.

"Seriously?"

I attempt a disinterested shrug. "I don't spend much time hanging around the pool, Jess."

"Honestly, if I didn't see your byline every week, I'd think you lived under a rock," she mutters before leaning in conspiratorially, a flash of girlish excitement in her eyes. "See the tall one with the fucked up hair?"

I scan the gaggle of lean bodies; of the twenty or so gathered, I can eliminate nearly half based solely on the fact that they're already wearing purple swim caps. Then my eyes alight on the swimmer leaning against the ladder leading to the lowest diving platform whose hair is admittedly fucked up – or perhaps just-fucked – an absolutely riotous russet mess. As my eyes fall on him, his head tips back and he barks out a laugh; my breath hitches somewhere between my chest and my throat, and Jessica chuckles.

"Yep. That's him. Edward Cullen."

Edward Cullen, in addition to being a record-holding swimmer, is also what Jessica would generally refer to as "fuckhot." Everything about him is long: his neck, his arms, his torso, his legs. The only thing I cannot unilaterally confirm as being on the same scale as the rest of him, hidden as it still is by the black Adidas warm-up pants he has yet to shed, is precisely the detail on which I am duty-bound to report. Apart from the hair that doesn't look like it will cooperate too well with any attempt to coax it into a rubber swim cap, the only features I can make out with any clarity from this distance are his well-defined pectoral muscles and a set of abdominals my grandmother could have used on her laundry days. There's also something ridiculously appealing about the way he has draped himself against the metal rungs of the ladder, all lean, sinuous muscle and fair skin. As I am staring at him, an older man I can only assume is the coach claps him on the shoulder and Edward nods, straightening his posture and untying the drawstring below his belly button as he turns his back to us. Black pants slide down long legs, and another purple Speedo is in clear view; for perhaps the first time in my life, I have no desire to laugh.

"I know, right?" comes the suddenly breathy voice from beside me.

While I'm sure no one but Jessica can tell where my focus is, I feel a telltale heat creeping up the back of my neck and I glance around me for reassurance that my bug-eyed perusal went unnoticed by the rest of the bleacher crowd. In desperate need of a distraction I rummage in my bag for my trusty Moleskine notebook and a pen, pleasantly surprised when my hunt unearths a pack of gum. Offering one to my partner in journalistic crime, I give the process of unwrapping the stick of Juicy Fruit far more concentration than it generally requires as I attempt to will my skin to return to its normal shade of pale.

"It would be an absolute sin if that's not natural," Jessica whispers conspiratorially into my ear, and I fold the now-unwrapped gum into thirds before popping it into my mouth and sinking my molars into the sugary square. Taking a fortifying breath, I let my gaze return to Edward Cullen, who is much closer to us now, standing behind the diving block of Lane 4. Seemingly against the laws of nature his once-riotous hair has been tamed by his swim cap, and tinted swim goggles rest against his forehead. My traitorous eyes catalog the details that were less noticeable from a greater distance: the definition of his shoulder and quad muscles, the laser-focused eyes that stare at the clear water as he scissors his arms back and forth in front of his torso, the faint happy trail leading into his swimsuit. My knee bouncing, I allow my gaze to trace that line down his torso, following the thin line of hair to the front of his Speedo. And I nearly inhale my gum.

Jess swats me on the back as I sputter and coax the wad back to the front of my mouth, and even through my mortified wheezing I can feel a damp sweat at the back of my neck. "Absolute sin," she repeats, and all I can do is nod, taking a deep breath to regain what little composure I may have had before I shamelessly checked out Edward Cullen's junk. "Okay," she says, clicking her pen and flipping to a blank page in her small notepad. "So we're going to place Edward Cullen in the non-padding column, if only out of sheer optimism, right?"

As I stare at my friend's expectant face and the pen hovering over her notebook, our reason for being here seems ridiculously stupid. "Jess, we can't do this." I shove my own notebook back in my bag and reach for my sweater as she wraps a gentle hand around my wrist before I can catapult myself out of my seat.

"Bella, it's a joke, okay? These are Division I athletes; they shave their body hair, for crying out loud. They're certainly not rolling up tube socks and stuffing them inside their tiny little swimsuits."

"Then what the hell are we doing here?" I all but hiss.

Jess shrugs, and I'm finding her nonchalance increasingly irritating. "It'll be funny. It'll sell papers. It's a counterpoint to the heavy news. Take your pick."

For some unknown reason, my mind hits the brakes and comes to a screeching halt on one particular detail from her statement. "They shave their bodies?"

"Yeah. To eliminate drag."

I snort. "Seems like men shaving their legs puts them squarely _inside_ the drag category, if you ask me." Still, I'm grateful for her ability to talk me off the ledge and I retrieve my notebook, pointing toward a freckly freshman standing in the wings. "Definitely padding," I offer, and Jessica beams.

"Definitely."

* * *

"The dean will see you now," Mrs. Cope says as she hangs up the receiver of her phone, gesturing with the other hand toward the closed door behind which sits my sometime phone buddy and current biggest non-fan.

"Thanks, Mrs. Cope." This isn't the first time I've been sitting in the waiting area outside Dean Pritchett's office, though it is the first time I've been summoned here for something other than an interview for a story. This time, I suspect, I've been summoned for a reaming of the highest order. My nerves are tempered only by the fact that Jessica is a trembling mess beside me; for all her bluster when we were writing the piece, the idea that we may actually be in trouble for it has sent her bravado packing. Taking pity on her, I enter the dean's office first, my shoulders squared.

"Hello, Dean," I greet, and shrewd blue eyes find me from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His plaid bowtie heaves with a sigh as he leans back in his leather chair, gesturing toward the two chairs facing him.

"Ladies. Please have a seat."

I situate myself in one chair as Jessica does the same in the other, and I gaze at him expectantly; for all his administrative prickliness, I like Dean Pritchett. He reminds me of a nerdier version of my dad, Charlie: no nonsense, just the facts, save-me-the-political-bullshit-and-let-me-do-my-job. I also get the genuine sense that he _likes_ college kids, and likes education, and wants to help people wherever he can. I can picture him minus the bowtie, grilling burgers for his grandkids on the Fourth of July, and it's made me develop something of a soft spot for the old coot. Even when he's glaring at me.

"Ladies, was this really necessary?" he asks, sighing again.

"What exactly are you referring to, Dean?"

His glare becomes a frown. "Miss Swan. Please tell me there isn't another story in yesterday's student paper that should concern me more than the piece hypothesizing about the… particular anatomical merits of our student-athletes?" His lips twist when he says "anatomical merits," and I have to tamp down on a smile.

"We didn't name any names," Jessica points out, and I shake my head at her slightly. Sometimes the dean just needs to say his piece.

"Which is the only reason this is simply a matter of poor taste and not something altogether more serious," Dean Pritchett barks, and I can see that he's genuinely irritated. As I open my mouth to remind him that not only is "The Lighter Side" a column that is generally accepted to be satirical in nature but the student paper doesn't answer to the administration for its content, I am cut off by the sound of the door behind me opening and a smooth voice cutting through the quickly-growing tension.

"Dean Pritchett. I'm sorry to interrupt, but Mrs. Cope assured me that you wouldn't mind if I joined the meeting and I think you'll agree I have a vested interest in this… matter."

If it's possible, Mr. All-American Swimmer looks nearly as obscene in street clothes as he does in a tiny pair of royal purple spandex briefs. Dark-wash jeans hug hips, a near-threadbare Northwestern Swimming t-shirt hugs pectorals and shoulder muscles, and _I_ want to hug _him._ Among other things.

"Mr. Cullen, of course." The dean gestures toward another chair pushed against the wall. "Please, have a seat."

Edward, however, does no such thing and instead approaches the desk, standing between my chair and Jessica's and gazing down at the face of the older man impassively. "Listen, sir, I gave the newspaper staff the go-ahead for the story."

The dean's eyebrows are somewhere around his hairline, and the mouth-agape look of shock on his face is probably a pretty close mirror image of my own expression as I turn wide eyes on Edward's profile. This is the first time I'm really seeing him up close, and I'm instantly distracted by all the details not afforded me from my bleacher seat a few days ago: brown-sugar stubble peppering a ridiculously angular jaw, a neat row of white teeth bracketed by pink lips, green eyes fringed with lashes longer than mine. I am choked by a ball of words and breath as Edward gazes calmly back at the man staring at him from behind the desk.

"You did what?"

Those defined shoulders shrug and Edward cocks his head to the side slightly, the tendons in his neck on display. So now, in addition to hugging him, I want to bite him. Again, among other things. "I thought it would be funny. And it was. And sir, it's worth noting that the turnout at our meet last night was the best we've had at a regular-season event in the four years I've been here. I just checked with the Athletic Director and we haven't made that much ticket revenue in close to a decade." I don't know if it's the idea of added revenue or the assurance that we didn't just completely go rogue on him, but the dean visibly deflates, leaning back against the padded leather chair once again. "Plus, our Invitational Tournament is this weekend, and the sudden increase in interest – regardless of the reason – is a good thing, sir. Really, the only issue is that I didn't run it by the rest of the team first, but I'm the captain; I made the decision. So that's on me. These ladies did nothing wrong."

Wire-rimmed glasses are dragged off the dean's face and he pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes falling closed. The familiar sigh escapes his lips and the office is silent for a beat before those eyes open again and find me. "Miss Swan. Miss Stanley. I apologize for any implication that you are lacking in… integrity." He pauses to slide his glasses back on his nose. "And I can appreciate the... humorous nature of the column in question. But may I at least request that your staff keep the… anatomically-focused pieces to a minimum?"

"Yes, sir," I promise. I've just been saved from having to talk about penises in the office of the Dean of Students; the least I can do is promise not to make a habit of writing about them. Unsurprisingly, it's not a hard promise to make, and I let loose a sigh of my own. "I prefer hard news, anyway."

I hear a snort from the space between Jessica and me, but when I glance at him Edward's features are carefully schooled into a neutral expression. Delicious looks and a dirty mind: I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is about. You know, in addition to the obviously admirable contents of his non-padded banana hammock.

Once we have exited the dean's office and made our way to the sidewalk outside the administration building, Jessica launches herself at Edward, grabbing his bicep with both hands. "Edward, that was seriously awesome. How did you even know we were about to get ripped a new one?"

He shrugs and grins. "I heard Rose mention it to Emmett. Didn't seem right," he says before his gaze falls on me where I'm standing hugging my coat around my body. "I don't believe we've met," he says, holding out his hand. "I'm Edward Cullen."

"Bella Swan," I respond, accepting his handshake. His fingers, it's worth noting, are also long. In keeping with the trend, apparently. "Um. Thanks. For doing that. It was nice not to have to say 'penis' in front of the Dean of Students."

He snorts again. "My pleasure. Really, I should be thanking you. I wasn't blowing smoke in there; last night's meet was the most well-attended in my four years here." He pauses, a small crease of a frown appearing between his brows. "Even if some of the guys were unusually hesitant to strip down."

"We didn't name names," I defend half-heartedly, and he smirks.

"Believe me when I tell you a guy knows when his body is being talked about, even if there's no name attached."

Jessica steps in. "So you could tell who we were talking about in which case?"

"For the most part. I have to applaud you: you were just vague enough to avoid being libelous, but detailed enough that it's pretty easy to guess which speculation belongs to whom. You guys are good." The smirk deepens. "And you were pretty spot-on, so no one can say your story was defamatory."

Suddenly I recall what we wrote about him and my face flames; I am instantly grateful beyond belief that the story has two names to its byline, and Edward will never know it was me who wrote those undeniably complimentary things about him. In fact, given the way Jessica's panting over him, he probably assumes it was her. I'm also uncharacteristically impressed with his correct usage of the word "whom," though judging from the enthusiasm with which Jessica is lobbying for the status of Edward Cullen arm-candy, I shouldn't get too attached.

"Listen, Jess, I gotta run. I have class in twenty minutes and I have to print something out beforehand. Edward, thanks again, it was nice meeting you. Good luck this weekend." I offer them both an awkward wave and beat a hasty retreat down the sidewalk toward the computer lab.

Later that evening, as I am juggling my bag, a stack of mail, and a bag of clean laundry while I wrestle with our apartment door, I hear the shrill ringing of our phone from inside. Cursing the lock for which I've been meaning to buy some WD-40 for about a month, I finally manage to wrench the door open and snatch the cordless phone from the table just inside the entryway.

"Hello?" My voice is breathless, and I immediately hope it's not my mother; she always manages to assume I've answered the phone in the middle of a steamy rendezvous when I sound winded. Which is ridiculous for a number of reasons, the most pressing of which being the notion that I would ever answer the phone during sex. Particularly sex good enough to make me breathless.

"Hello, could I speak to Bella Swan, please?"

"You got her," I reply, dumping my keys on the kitchen counter and shrugging my bag onto one of the mismatched chairs around our kitchen table.

"Oh. Hi, Bella. This is Edward Cullen, we met this afternoon?"

Does he honestly think I don't remember the man about whose bulge I raved in print? "Hi, Edward," I say as I slip out of my coat.

"Hi. I, uh, wanted to thank you again for the positive press. We really are enjoying quite the popularity surge; according to Emmett, the football team is pretty jealous."

"Well, I should thank you again for saving our asses with the dean, so I guess we can call it even," I say, crossing the small kitchen and opening the refrigerator door in search of sustenance. "And football pants leave only marginally more to the imagination… maybe this story should be the first in a series. We could mollify Emmett and boost our readership in one fell swoop."

"Though you did promise the dean not to expand on your… coverage."

"True." I sniff a container of leftover chicken lo mein I don't remember ordering and wonder if it's Angela's. And if it's growing bacterial cultures. I put it back on the shelf; the last thing I need right now is an intestinal parasite.

There is a pause, and I can hear shuffling on the other end of the phone before Edward's voice comes through the earpiece again. "The team would like to extend an invitation to you and Jessica to join us for our after-party following the Invitational next Saturday night."

I pause in my perusal of the refrigerator's contents. "That might be the most formal invitation to a college party I've ever received."

"Well that, Ms. Swan, is a tragedy."

I begrudgingly accept that there is nothing edible or appealing to be found in the fridge and close the door. "Are we to be tarred and feathered in a public square? Or the student union?"

He chuckles. "This is a friendly crowd, I promise." He pauses. "Well, mostly. A few of the guys are suitably… humbled. Though they'd never admit to being the ones with the less-than-stellar reviews, so I hardly think they'd confront you."

"This might be the most win-win story I've ever written," I say, the thought only just having occurred to me. "The people we say nice things about invite us to parties, and the people we don't refuse to say anything to us at all."

"So you acknowledge I'm one of the more favorably-reviewed subjects, then?"

I'm glad he can't see my face, which experience tells me probably looks right now rather like a fire hydrant. "Um."

He laughs. "I'm kidding. Saturday, though. Would you join us? You can come to the meet and then follow me back to my place."

"Hang on," I interrupt, but he cuts me off.

"For the party," he hastily adds. "Sorry. That sounded bad. The party's at my house. Mine and Emmett's house. We're a little off the beaten path, so following us will probably be easier than giving you directions."

"Okay." I have no idea what I'm doing, never having been the type to go to either swim meets or team keggers, though an irritating voice at the back of my mind whispers something about the opportunity to see Edward in a Speedo again. The voice, unsurprisingly, sounds like Jessica's.

"Great! Okay. That's great. Could you, uh, extend the invitation to Jessica as well?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I was wondering if you wouldn't mind extending the invitation to Jessica," he repeats, and I frown.

"You don't want to invite her yourself?"

There's an awkward pause and my confusion mounts as he clears his throat. "I uh, don't want my invitation to be misinterpreted," he says finally.

"Misinterpreted?" I echo, though I suspect I know where he's headed with this. Jessica's not exactly subtle.

"Yes." It's all the explanation he offers.

"Okay."

"Thank you."

"Thanks for the invitation."

"See you next Saturday, Bella."

* * *

After the following Saturday's Invitational, in which a certain swimmer came within four-tenths of a second of the record he's aiming to break and during which I shamelessly ogled the contents of that very swimmer's swimsuit on more than one occasion, I find myself behind the wheel of my car following Edward's black Audi along a paved road that seems to be leading us deeper into the woods.

"I've heard their house is ridiculous," Jessica says, peering through her window and into the inky darkness.

"Cool-ridiculous, or might-catch-some-sort-of-skin-fungus-if-you-touch-anything-ridiculous?" I ask, my eyes trained resolutely on the glowing red taillights ahead of us.

"Boy drives a $60,000 sports car, what do you think?"

I don't answer as Edward's brake lights illuminate; suddenly the trees open up and we're staring at the face of a house that looks like it belongs to a well-to-do family instead of a trio of male undergrads.

"Holy shit," Jessica breathes, leaning forward to gaze at the house.

"Seriously." I throw the car into park and unfasten my seat belt as I watch Edward unfold himself from the driver's seat of his car and turn to face me. I kill the engine and slip my keys into my purse as Jessica pushes her door open and slides out of the car. After a beat of hesitation, I follow her lead, rising from the car and hugging my coat around me as I make my way to where Edward is still standing beside his car.

"I didn't drive too fast, did I?" he asks, extending a hand toward the porch steps.

"No," I reply, glancing at Jessica, whose eyes are darting between Edward and the looming brick façade of the house.

As we step into the warm, bright foyer, Jasper Whitlock appears at Jessica's side and slips behind her, curling his fingertips around the collar of her winter coat. "Hey, Jess, I'm glad you could make it." She freezes for a moment before allowing him to slide her coat off her arms, and as he folds her discarded coat over his forearm he extends the other elbow toward her. "Can I get you a drink?" She glances at me and I gaze back at her for a beat before she smiles at Jasper and accepts his proffered arm.

"Sure, that'd be great."

I don't miss the look Jasper throws at Edward before he escorts Jessica away, but as I tip my face up to look at him he grins down at me. "May I take your coat?" I shrug out of it quickly and hand it to him; he mimics Jasper's actions, draping it over one arm, but instead of offering me his other, he holds it out toward the doorway. "After you." He's very gallant, this Edward Cullen. Despite the fact that I have no idea where I'm going, I move in the direction he indicated and toward the telltale rumbles of a small party. I step into a bright kitchen, where a few couples and small groups lean against counters and a gaggle of girls sit around the kitchen table listening to Rosalie talk. I turn to face Edward, who has deposited my coat somewhere, and he glances around before arching an eyebrow at me and nodding toward the kitchen table, atop which sits a keg and a row of various liquor bottles.

"Drink?"

"A beer would be great," I nod. I've never been very good at drinking liquor, and if I'm going to be driving home, two beers is my absolute max.

"So, have you been an avid swim fan for long?" he asks as he grabs a red plastic cup and presses on the tap of the keg.

"That was actually my first time," I admit, leaning against the edge of the table. "I'm not much of a sports person. I was there on assignment. As you know."

"Did you like what you saw?" he asks, handing me the full cup and grabbing another from the tower of them beside the keg.

"Excuse me?"

In the dim lighting, I could swear he blushes. "The swimming. Sorry, I meant the swimming. Not the… budgie-smugglers."

"Budgie-smugglers?"

"Australian slang for Speedos," he explains, filling his own cup. "I meant did you like the swimming?"

"Oh. Yeah, actually, I did. It's exciting to watch."

He nods. "It's easy to get into, even for non-sports people. Not a lot of rules to learn or anything." The smirk I'm beginning to believe is his trademark makes a reappearance. "The Speedos are really just an added bonus."

"For some," I amend, and his grin is positively wolfish.

"For some," he acknowledges, and the elephant in the room is enormous. The thought has no sooner crossed my mind than I am choking on a mouthful of beer at the mental image that trails in its wake. "Whoa, you okay?" He awkwardly claps me on the back.

"I'm good." I will the flames licking at my cheeks to buzz off as I take a smaller sip and follow him from the kitchen and through the living room, where Emmett has organized a game of Survivor Flip-Cup around a long piece of plywood doubling as a makeshift table.

"Edward!" he greets. "You guys want in?"

Edward glances at me and I shake my head. "We're good, man. Thanks." Emmett nods and returns to explaining the rules.

"Thank God," Edward murmurs, and I follow his gaze to where Jessica is hanging off Jasper's arm at the opposite end of the table. He seems far more pleased by her attention than Edward, who leans down toward me. "Want to sit outside?" he asks, then, off my dubious look, he adds, "We have an enclosed porch."

I agree and he nods, leading the way through the throng of people and out the back door onto a deck enclosed in sliding glass doors. Despite the darkness beyond the panes of glass, I can see that the deck overlooks Lake Michigan.

"Wow," I breathe as Edward turns on one space heater before crossing the room to turn on another.

"Do you mind sharing?" he asks, holding up a fleece blanket and nodding toward a suspended bench swing. I shake my head; my voice has left the building at the mere notion of being beneath any kind of blanket with Edward Cullen.

"Can I ask you a question?" I say once we are settled, the plaid blanket stretched over our laps and the space heaters slowly taking the chill off the room as we swing infinitesimally, the sensation not unlike the gentle rocking of a boat.  
"Of course."

"Why invite us at all if you didn't want her to get the wrong idea?"

He takes a sip of his beer and licks his lips before responding. "I wanted to invite you, but I got the impression that this wasn't really your scene." He turns those green eyes to my face. "I thought if I extended the invitation under the guise of a group thank-you, you might be more likely to come." I'm taken aback by his candor; I don't know if it's the journalist in me or the woman, but I find it refreshing and not a little bit of a turn-on. "I also really did want to thank you for the complimentary review; I've been on the receiving end of a fair amount of positive female attention this week."

"Something tells me that's not a new development," I reply before I can check myself, and he blushes. I can't resist pushing his buttons. "Besides, how can you be so sure your review was complimentary?"

"'It is the opinion of the _Daily_ staff that a certain star swimmer is a record-holder in more places than the scoreboard,'" he recites, and my eyebrows climb.

"Do all athletes memorize their good press?"

"They do when it hits a subject matter close to home," he says, devoid of embarrassment. "And it doesn't get much closer than that." I laugh and a comfortable silence falls between us as we sway gently, sipping our beers and gazing out toward the shadowed lake. "You're really good," he says after a moment. "Genital speculation notwithstanding. You're a journalism major?"

I nod. "International studies minor," I add. "I'd like to cover world news."

He lets out a low whistle. "So you could be the next Anderson Cooper, huh?"

"Christiane Amanpour," I correct, and he holds up his hands with a grin.

"Of course."

"What about you?"

"Biomedical engineering," he says. "Music minor."

"Diverse," I say. "Curing cancer while playing guitar?"

Almost instantly the humor is gone from his eyes and he looks away from me. "Something like that." For the first time since I've met him, his voice is flat, and I sense immediately that I've struck a nerve.

"Edward?"

He takes a sip of his beer, but his eyes gaze out into darkness. "My father is a doctor and my younger sister has acute lymphocytic leukemia. I guess the combination heavily influenced my decision. I'm a cliché," he finishes, and my hand finds his beneath the plaid fabric before I can worry about the implications of it.

"Not at all."

We sit in silence for a few minutes before I realize I'm rubbing circles on the back of his hand with my thumb; as I move to pull away he twists his wrist and grasps my hand in his. "She's in remission now," he says after a moment, the pad of his thumb tracing my knuckles as he continues to gaze out into the darkness.

"Where do they live? Your family?"

"Chicago," he says simply. "They actually own this house. My parents lived here when they were first married before moving somewhere bigger after Alice and I were born. They'd been renting it out and when the tenants left they offered it to us."

The realization that he stayed so close to home for college doesn't escape me, but I choose not to comment on it.

"How long have you lived with Emmett?"

"We were paired up freshman year," he says, putting his cup on the table beside him, gravity still sitting around his shoulders like a scarf, and I curse my stupid mouth. "They tried to put athletes together, and ours was one of the matches that actually worked out. Jasper moved in with us at the start of our junior year; he'd been living with some of his baseball teammates, but one dropped out and the other transferred." He glances over at me. "And you live with Angela?"

I nod. "We actually went to high school together and ran the school paper there. When we both got into Northwestern, we decided to room together. Thankfully, it's worked out well for us."

A small smile lifts the corners of his mouth. "So, less Amanpour, more Woodward and Bernstein?"

I grin, despite the lingering guilt over my insensitivity. "Possibly."

We sway for a few more minutes before he breaks the silence, smirk back in place. "Can we get back to talking about my cock now?"

Something about hearing him say the word "cock" sends a flash of heat through my body and I gape at him. "Has anyone ever told you that your ego is enormous?"

"My ego?" He tips his head back and squints at the ceiling in mock consideration. "No. Other parts of me, however, have recently been described as considerable in size."

Our hands are still clasped together and his shoulder is pressed up against mine as we sway gently in the gradually warming air. I am searching for an appropriately witty yet charming response when Emmett's voice cuts through the silence.

"Cullen, get your sweet ass off that bench and rally the troops. We're polar-plunging."

Edward groans and I frown in confusion as I glance at his face and pull away slightly. "Polar plunging? What's that?"

"It's a cute way of saying we're going to freeze our nuts off by jumping into Lake Michigan in the dead of winter," he sighs, glaring at Emmett. "May I ask why?"

Emmett shrugged. "Freshmen are here. They haven't done it yet, and it's a rite of passage. Let's go, Golden Boy."

"Isn't that dangerous?" I protest as he lifts the blanket and unfolds himself from the seat beside me.

"Not really. Ill-advised, yes. Dangerous, no. Provided you don't stay in too long and get hypothermia, but the water's fucking freezing so nobody's ever been stupid enough to stay in for longer than a few seconds."

Rosalie's head appears around the doorframe and she rolls her eyes in Edward's direction. "Can't you talk him out of this?" she asks. "Honestly, you guys are worse than five-year-olds."

"Ouch," Edward replies. "And Rose, darling, believe me when I tell you that you have at your disposal far more numerous – and more effective – methods of persuasion when it comes to Emmett than I do."

She huffs and disappears back inside the house as Edward extends a hand to help me stand. "Well, this should be very interesting for you, at least."

"Why's that?"

He grins. "It's right up your alley. You're about to see about twenty men voluntarily shrink their most prized body parts to the size of cocktail wieners. Think of the exposé you could run."

"Excellent. Just what this night's been missing: fodder."

His grin widens and I follow him back into the house where the majority of the swim team has congregated in the living room. "O Captain! my Captain!" Emmett booms, and I'm vaguely impressed that he can quote Whitman, even in brief. The few freshmen on the team stand huddled together, sporting varying expressions of dread, and Rosalie stands just behind the group, arms crossed over her chest as she rolls her eyes periodically. Jasper is sitting on the arm of the sofa, index finger crooked around the neck of a half-full beer bottle, his heel bumping against the side of the couch. Clearly his status as a baseball player has exempted him from this particular act of hooliganism. I move to stand between Rose and Jessica, who is still firmly stationed at Jasper's side.

"Gentlemen." Edward's voice is stern, and if I hadn't seen him roll his eyes mere moments ago, I'd believe he was taking this seriously. "Disrobe."

The upperclassmen begin stripping off layers of shirts and sweaters, and after a brief moment of hesitation, the freshmen follow suit. They move to unbuckling belts and unbuttoning pants, and with the precision of homing radar my eyes find Edward. His shirtless chest is nothing I haven't seen before, but as I watch him undo his belt buckle a telltale heat licks at my neck. For some reason, it's infinitely sexier than untying the drawstring of his warm-up pants, and in the brief moment it takes him to unbutton and unzip his jeans, it occurs to me that I'm about to see Edward Cullen in his underwear. A damp heat gathers at the small of my back, and I pray that the flush on my face is minor enough to be explained away by the season. He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and pushes them to his thighs, letting them drop the rest of the way to the floor.

Calvin Klein Boxer-briefs.

Black ones.

I can't imagine there's water cold enough to shrink the bulge that fills the front panel to anything resembling cocktail-wiener size, but I suppose he'd know better than I would. I tear my eyes away from his crotch in hopes that no one noticed, and my eyes fall on his roommate.

"Wait a minute," I whisper, leaning in toward Rose. "Emmett's not even on the swim team."

"No," she agrees. "But he's never found a stupid prank or dare he wasn't willing to be a part of. Slap some Greek letters on his chest and point him in the direction of the nearest case race and he's basically your typical frat boy." She rolls her eyes and huffs again for good measure, but I note that her eyes trail up and down Emmett's considerable frame with something that doesn't look much like irritation. I fight a smile as I focus once more on the gaggle of college boys standing around in their skivvies.

Rose and I have been friends since our sophomore year, when she moved onto the hall Angela and I were occupying; Angela convinced her to join the newspaper staff when she walked by her room and saw some breathtaking black and white landscape photos of the Pacific Northwest hanging above her desk. She stopped to find out if Rose had ever heard of Forks and learned that she'd taken the photos herself, and shortly thereafter Rosalie turned up in the newsroom as our newest – and, as we quickly learned, best – photographer. She and Emmett have been together since the spring of freshman year, during which Emmett happened upon her being assaulted in a parking lot by her then-boyfriend. No one but the two of them knows much more detail than that, but they've been inseparable ever since.

"You're going to want to grab your jacket," she says as the boys begin moving toward the back door of the house, and I retrieve it from where it's been draped over the back of an armchair in the corner as Jessica does the same. Rose shrugs into her own and we follow her through the closed-in porch, where it occurs to me to snatch the discarded plaid blanket off the bench swing, and onto the deck, where we join the row of other female party guests watching the crowd of boys half-running, half-stumbling down the sloping property toward the water's edge, silvery moonlight glinting off the bare skin of their backs and shoulders as they nearly disappear into the night.

A few moments later, whoops and hollers break the darkness, alerting us to the fact that they've reached the water's edge. Just as I'm starting to feel a telltale numbing in my ears and nose, we hear the noises and hushed curses of young men in varying states of inebriation and near-frostbite making their way back up the sloping incline with considerably more difficulty than they'd had going down. I scan the dripping faces for Edward's, noting the blue lips and chattering teeth of his teammates. A small pinprick of worry is just beginning to bubble up in my chest when he appears trailing behind Emmett, the last one to make his way back up the hill.

"H-h-h-hey, b-b-b-b-abe," Emmett greets Rosalie. "W-w-w-water w-w-w-was g-g-g-great."

"You're an idiot," she replies as she drags him inside.

Edward draws to a halt in front of me, and I arch an eyebrow as I hold the blanket out to him. His blue-tinged lips stretch into a smile despite the fact that his teeth are chattering and he wraps himself up as I lead the way back inside the warm cocoon of the enclosed sun porch. "You kn-kn-know," he says, attempting a conversational tone, "b-b-b-body heat would g-g-g-go a long way at a t-t-t-time like this."

I take a page out of Rosalie's playbook and roll my eyes, even though the idea of being wrapped in a blanket with him is far from unappealing. I rub his upper arms in an attempt to coax some warmth back into his skin, and the shivers racking his body begin to subside somewhat. "I like this sweater, and I don't particularly want it tainted with lake water."

"My skin is p-p-practically dry, and I can lose the boxers," is his chivalrous offer as he shrugs the blanket off his shoulders and wraps it around his waist, tucking the end in like a towel.

I snort. "Aren't you worried that we might be forced to print a retraction?"

"A retraction?" he asks, his brow furrowed in confusion. I look pointedly to the section of blanket covering his lap and he smirks. "B-believe me, Bella Swan, a few minutes wrapped in a blanket with you in nothing but my birthday suit and any… reduction in that particular region would be swiftly remedied." I bite the inside of my cheek and he grins again, offering me his hand. "Come on."

Wordlessly, I follow him through the house and into the foyer; it doesn't occur to me until I'm halfway up the wooden staircase that he's leading me to his bedroom. My steps falter and he glances back at me. His lips still haven't quite returned to their usual pink color, and his skin is a canvas of goose bumps; the blanket sits low on his hips, and I can see the twin indentations above his tailbone. His eyes find mine, one eyebrow arched, and I flush. His face splits into a pleased grin. "I promise to be a gentleman," he says, despite the fact that there's a heat in his eyes that is completely at odds with his chilled body.

I follow him to a closed wooden door at the far end of the hall and he pushes it open, flicking a switch inside to throw the room into a warm glow. The bedroom is far from what one would expect of a college-aged man; there are no piles of dirty laundry, no garbage, no food debris. No video game system or adult magazines littering the floor by the bedside. Instead, there's a neatly made queen-sized four-poster bed with a black and gray comforter, a cherry wood dresser and a matching desk beneath the window; a large cherry bookcase stands on the far wall, lined with neat rows of books and a few photo frames. A Northwestern pennant hangs over the bed and a bedside table sits beside it, a single lamp and a bookmarked copy of _A Farewell to Arms_ on its polished surface. I glance around, and my pleasant surprise at its neatness is suddenly tempered by a less pleasant suspicion; I turn to face him, my arms crossed over my chest.

"Is it always this neat?"

He glances around and shrugs nonchalantly. "I'm not really here all that much," he says. "It's easier to find what I need if it's organized." I watch him carefully, looking for signs of untruthfulness, and when his focus returns to my face he must notice my scrutiny because his eyes narrow slightly before they widen in surprise. "You think I straightened up in case I got laid tonight!" He jabs a long finger at me, and his expression is equal parts indignation at my skepticism and delight at calling me out. I blush. "Bella Swan, I'm offended."

"No you're not," I scowl, even as I feel my face heating.

"I am," he argues, smirk in place as he crosses his arms over his chest. "You think I'm a slut. I'm absolutely offended."

"I didn't think boys could be sluts," I reply, desperate to redirect the conversation, or at least regain partial control over it.

"Manwhore," he amends with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Player. Whatever."

"Well. Are you?"

His eyebrows climb, and it takes him a beat to respond. "Wow. You're very direct."

I shrug. "Occupational tool. Roundabout bullshit tends to make my job more complicated."

"What about your personal life?"

"That too."

Edward considers me for a moment as the smirk slowly evaporates, his face suddenly serious. "No," he says finally.

"No?"

"No. To the manwhore-slash-player inquiry."

"Hm."

"What?"

I shrug. "Nothing. Just 'hm.'"

"The reports of my prowess are greatly exaggerated," he says after a moment, a hint of sheepishness coloring his normally cocksure countenance.

"Is that so?"

He nods. "You're on the newspaper staff, so I'm guessing you've heard that I slept with Lauren Mallory." It's not a question. "Which I did not."

"Okay."

He arches an eyebrow. "What else have you heard?"

I shrug. "Not a lot," I answer truthfully, and he seems surprised.

"So one supposed conquest was enough to make you assume I'm a playboy who lures willing women up to my overly organized lair of sin?"

I shrug again. "It wasn't so much the rumor mill," I admit, ignoring for the moment his all-too-accurate use of the adjective "willing."

"Then what was it?" Suddenly I find the contents of his bookshelf fascinating, my eyes breaking our stare to peruse the spines of the books organized there. "Bella Swan." A small shiver works its way up my spine at the smile behind his voice, and I feel him behind me, close but not touching. I am all too aware of the proximity of his bare skin. Squaring my shoulders, I set my jaw and turn to face him.

"You're a jock," I say.

"Yes."

"A good one."

"Yes."

"And you're very popular."

"Yes."

"And—" I trail off, searching for tact where there is none to be found. "Well, that," I say, gesturing to the blanket that is beginning to dip dangerously low around his hips.

He pretends to misunderstand. "I look good in plaid?" he guesses, but his smug look belies his bewilderment.

"There are just…" I search for the word. "Precedents," I finish.

"Which is a nice way of saying 'stereotypes,'" he says, and I can't tell if he's insulted.

"I suppose."

"Hm." He doesn't offer anything more, and we stand facing each other in an awkward silence until he sighs. "I should change. If you wouldn't mind?"

I spin around so quickly I nearly trip into the bookcase I was once admiring, and right myself before leaning in to look at the framed photographs lined up along one of the shelves. "Is this your family?" I ask, studying a shot of a younger Edward standing with his arm around the shoulders of a younger girl, two beautiful people I can only assume are his parents standing on either side of them like bookends.

"Yeah," he replies, and I hear a drawer open. "That was when I was in high school; we went to France for the summer." The drawer closes. I move to the next photo of Edward and Emmett and Jasper standing in front of Wrigley Field, and I open my mouth to comment but the words die on my tongue as I realize that in the reflection of the small pane of glass I can see the faint image of Edward's bare back behind me. And, as I straighten slightly, his bare ass. As is becoming a regular pastime of mine I shamelessly ogle him, at once hoping and dreading that he'll turn around. I've never been an ass woman, but from what I can tell in the makeshift mirror, his rear end is as perfect as the rest of him. It hardly seems fair, really; surely he must have a flaw somewhere, and Lord knows it's probably not in the only part of him I have yet to see uncovered.

I sigh in relief and disappointment as he pulls up a dry pair of boxer briefs and go back to perusing his bookshelves. "Who's this?" I ask, tapping the third frame, and my breath gets caught in my throat when I feel his bare chest press against my shoulder.

"My grandparents," he says simply. "And you're safe now."

I turn, my eyes widening in surprise to realize he's still in his underwear, and he frowns slightly. "Sorry… you've seen me in less; I didn't think…" He trails off as he grabs a pair of jeans from his bed and steps into them. "Sorry."

I shake my head. "No, it's fine." I take a step toward him. "Edward, I'm sorry." He straightens, buttoning his fly before beginning to weave a belt through the loops.

"Sorry for what?"

"Making a stupid assumption."

I'm relieved when a smile touches the corners of his mouth. "Forgiven," he says simply. "You're not the first woman to be operating under that particular misconception." He pauses and shrugs. "To be perfectly honest, it's not that I haven't been presented with the opportunities. It's just… not my style." He trails off as he dips his head to buckle the belt; when he lifts his face I see he's biting his lip, and I realize it's the first time I've seen Edward look even remotely unsure of himself. He slides his hands into his pockets, and it takes a considerable effort on my part not to let my eyes trail down his toned stomach. "That's not to say I wouldn't really, really like to kiss you right now." I have no verbal response, and he takes a step toward me. "Of course, I wouldn't want to perpetuate my apparent reputation as a shameless lothario." I bite my lip and his eyes darken as they drop to my mouth. "I also wouldn't want to get you into trouble with Jessica," he adds.

"Screw Jessica," I breathe, and I can tell he's fighting a smile.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not." He lifts a hand to cup my jaw. "As it turns out, I'm quite taken with her friend." His thumb traces my chin. "Whom I have yet to truly thank for the glowing review." His eyes flicker to mine before returning to my mouth. "You have about two more seconds to stop me from compromising your journalistic integrity," he murmurs.

"Compromise away," I reply, and the words barely escape before he presses his mouth to mine. Despite the return of their normal color his lips are still cool, and my breath catches when he gently takes my top lip between his own. I feel warm breath washing over my mouth as his opens and his warm tongue slides along my lower lip. I moan and his other hand finds its way around my waist and to the small of my back, where it flattens against me and pulls me into his body. When I open my mouth his tongue dances along my upper lip before entering the cavern of my mouth, finding my own and sliding against it. He groans and his warm hand slides from my jaw to cup the back of my head, winding his fingers in my hair as his other arm tightens around me. Our tongues move against each other until his lips leave mine to find the skin beneath my ear. I feel my eyes roll back as I tip my head to grant him access. "God, Edward," I breathe, and his hand leaves my hair to join his other around my waist, pulling me even more flush with his body. My arousal surges when I feel the seam of his fly pressed against my lower stomach, a telltale hardness beneath the denim. I feel a slight pinch as his teeth nip at the skin of my collarbone and I whimper into the room as his lips soothe the same patch of flesh.

"I just wish I could be sure I'm thanking the right journalist," he murmurs, and suddenly he's pulling away, unwinding his arms from around me and placing his large hands on my hips.

"What?" I am flustered, aroused, and not a little bit peeved. "What the hell?"

He takes a step back and plants his hands on his own hips. "I'd hate to be laboring under a misapprehension," he says. Cue the smirk. "After all, the story had a joint byline; there's no way to be sure that the particular piece of reporting I'm so thankful for was even written by you."

"You're right," I say, leaning back against his bookshelf. "Perhaps you should be thanking Jessica, after all."

"Maybe I should." He folds his arms across his chest and gazes at me, a smug smile twisting his lips into something altogether too self-satisfied.

"Fuck," I hiss. "Fine. It was me."

"It was you who what?"

"It was I who speculated on the size of your…" I trail off, gesturing at the fly of his jeans, which I can't help but notice is considerably more prominent than it was moments ago. "Junk."

"My _junk_?" he mimics, a mix of mock-surprise and triumph.

"Your… package."

"Package," he repeats, dumbfounded.

I huff. "Your _cock_, okay?"

His eyes darken considerably. "Oh, God. Say it again."

My mind flashes to earlier, and my own response to hearing him say the same word. Suddenly emboldened, I take a step forward and reach out a single fingertip to draw a line around his belly button before leaning in to whisper in his ear. "Your cock," I breathe, and his body goes rigid. "I wrote that you have a particularly impressive _cock_." As I move to step back, his hands wrap around my biceps.

"And yet you have no first-hand knowledge," he pants, his eyes trained on my mouth.

"That's more Jessica's department," I murmur and he shakes his head.

"Not where I'm concerned," he says and I tamp down a smile.

"Good to know."

"It seems," he says, easing his grip to run his hands up to my shoulders, "that a good reporter would do a little more research before speculating on something of such a… _delicate_ nature."

I glance down between us. "Delicate?" I allow my fingertip to follow the line of hair that disappears into the elastic of his boxer briefs peeking over the waistband of his jeans and he sucks in a breath. "I suppose that was rather irresponsible of me."

"It was," he agrees. "Though I'm willing to help you resolve that particular oversight."

"That's very big of you."

"So I've been told."

"And what would I owe you in return?"

He snorts. "Believe me, I'm fairly certain that the satisfaction of helping you in this particular endeavor will far outweigh any hardship on my end." One hand leaves my shoulder and traces the line of my clavicle to the center of my chest.

"You should know I don't generally do this," I say, even as my fingertips are reaching for his belt.

"You should know that neither do I," he replies, his hands sliding under my shirt to find the bare skin of my back. He lowers his head to bring his lips to mine, but before they can connect there's a knock at the door.

"Edward!" Emmett's voice is tentative, and I'm grateful beyond belief that he didn't just walk right in. Or show up thirty seconds later.

"Shit," Edward groans, then, raising his voice, "What?"

"Uh, the cops are here. I think the neighbors complained about the plunge. They want to talk to the person who owns the house."

"Son of a bitch," Edward mutters, pulling away to look into my face. He chuckles then, resting his forehead against mine. "Please tell me we can come back to this."

"I'm not sure I've met my burden of proof yet," I admit, and he beams as he pulls away from me, running a hand through his sadly not-yet-fucked hair.

"True enough." He grabs a long-sleeved thermal shirt from the bed and slips it over his head before holding a hand out to me. "Let's go meet some of Chicago's finest."

By the time Edward has mollified the police that his parents own the house and that the party is quiet and under control, most of the attendees have scattered and Jessica is ready to head home, Jasper having crashed and no other prospects in sight. She disappears to find her coat and purse and Edward shoves his hands into his pockets.

"Sorry," he says softly, and I shake my head.

"It was probably a good thing," I say, and his face falls. I hasten to reassure him. "I like to do a little more background on my subjects before I delve into the meat of the story."

He snorts. "Seems to me like you started with the meat this time."

"Touché."

He cups the back of his neck and I try not to notice the way his chest muscles ripple beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. "Can I take you to dinner?"

Unable to stop the unexpected swell of delight that surges through me, a pleased smile stretches across my face. "I'd like that."

He grins, then frowns slightly. "We have a meet in Wisconsin next weekend, but the weekend after that? Are you free?"

"I am," I say, and he takes a step toward me.

"Friday night? After the meet?"

"Sounds great."

He dips his head and his lips find mine briefly before I hear a muffled squeak from behind me. Jessica stands in the doorway, her purse clutched in her hand and her eyes as wide as saucers. Edward smiles lazily at her before planting a soft kiss on my forehead and stepping back. "I'll call you," he murmurs, and I nod before stepping through the front door.

"Oh my _God_, Bella," Jessica squeal-hisses beside me as we descend the porch steps and I hit the keyless entry remote to unlock my car. "As your friend and your fellow reporter, I'll be expecting confirmation of the finer points of our story."

I flick the headlights as I turn the key in the ignition and smirk into my rearview mirror as I shift the car into reverse. "Trust me, Jess. Confirmed."

* * *

True to his word, Edward calls. Monday night, when it's the slightly awkward and occasionally stilted conversation of two people who had what essentially amounts to a random hook-up and are trying to find comfortable conversational ground. Wednesday night, when he lets me vent about a freshman reporter whose lack of fact-checking almost got me in serious hot water with Angela and, by extension, our faculty adviser. Thursday night, when he tells me about the time he begged his parents to take him to see one of the Freddy Krueger movies and couldn't sleep in his own bed for a month. Friday night, when I find out he lost his virginity when he was fourteen, and when I admit that I gave it up more out of a desire to get rid of it than anything else during my freshman year at Northwestern. He calls from Wisconsin on Saturday afternoon, and I can hear a couple of his teammates ribbing him in the background. From the road on Sunday, when he tells me that he wishes our date was this weekend instead of next. By Monday, I find that I'm expecting his call, and he doesn't disappoint.

I run into him in the dining hall on Tuesday, dumping his garbage as I'm looking for a table. He grins at me and my knees go to jelly; I spend the rest of the day thanking my lucky stars I didn't drop my lunch all over the black and white checkered linoleum floor. On Wednesday he appears in the newsroom, smelling like chlorine, his damp hair curling at the back of his neck, bearing an enormous thermos of coffee that he says will fuel me into the wee hours. On Thursday, he calls just as I'm getting into bed, and we talk about more seemingly insignificant nothings until I fall asleep with the phone pressed to my ear. Friday morning, I wake to the sound of muffled grunts and a sleepy voice emanating from the speaker.

"Bella?"

"Mm."

He chuckles, a low, raspy, sleep-rumbly laugh. "I can't believe you're still there."

"Mmm." I'm not particularly coherent before my morning coffee. There is a pause before his sleep-roughened voice comes across the line again.

"Would it be presumptuous to say I really hope I wake up to your voice again tomorrow morning?"

It occurs to me suddenly that it's Friday, our official date night, and I stretch, arching against my sheets as warmth suffuses my body. "That could be arranged," I murmur, hoping my voice sounds sexy-sleepy and not dopey-sleepy. "After all, I have unlimited minutes."

Another chuckle, and I think I could get used to waking up to a laughing Edward. "Good to know."

That afternoon I make my way toward the Aquatics Center feeling increasingly like a swim groupie. At a big university like Northwestern, where the major sports like football and basketball garner a considerable amount of support – and a considerable number of fans – being an avid swim team follower is sort of like being an indie rock band groupie, showing up at concerts no one else realizes are even happening and wearing t-shirts people squint at and ask you to explain. That being said, recent weeks have seen an increased interest in the swimmers, a fact for which I really have no one to blame but myself. And Angela.

As I step into the pool area, already shrugging out of my coat, I nearly crash into the back of Emmett's hulking frame; he and Rosalie are standing just inside the door scanning the bleachers for a place to sit. We exchange hellos and I follow them to an open row near the far end of the pool. Once we are situated, I reach up to gather my hair into a knot at the nape of my neck; scanning the swimmers, I see Edward standing beneath the scoreboard, waving his arms around in giant circles and still dressed in his warm-up suit.

A few races take place, none of which Edward participates in, and I watch attentively, clapping and cheering even as I spend more time sneaking glances at him. At times he seems more like an assistant coach than a participant, clapping some teammates on the back after they compete, engaging in serious conversations with others prior to their events. On a few occasions he seems to be giving pointers on technique, moving his arms a certain way or crouching down as if he is on the starting blocks. Nearly an hour into the meet, he sheds his black outer layers and begins stretching, his defined muscles shifting fluidly beneath the smooth planes of his skin.

I watch him closely, grateful that there's no longer any reason to pretend not to. He bounces on his toes and tips his head from side to side, stretching the muscles and tendons along his neck before scissoring his arms in front of him. I dip a quick look to his swimsuit, and when I lift my gaze to his face again his eyes are on me. I flush, and a small smile pulls at his mouth.

"Edward said you guys are going out to dinner tonight?" Rosalie's voice interrupts my blatant eyeballing, and I break his stare to smile at her.

"Yeah."

"That's great." She pops her gum and I return my focus to Edward, who is talking to his coach. After a few minutes, a nasal voice informs us over a loudspeaker that the next event will be the 200-meter butterfly.

"It would be great if he could break it before the Big Tens," I hear Emmett say from the other side of Rose, and my eyes flicker to the records board on the far wall. According to the list, 1:45.04 is the time he's trying to beat, and I suddenly wish I knew more about swimming. Moments later a shrill whistle cuts through the hum of noise echoing in the cavernous space, and he makes his way to the starting blocks, snapping his goggles over his eyes. A few voices call out from the bleachers around us.

"Let's go, Edward!"

"You got this, Cullen!"

"Here we go, E!"

I watch, rapt, as he steps up onto the block, edging himself forward until long toes curl around the edge of it; I see his cheeks puff out as he takes a quick, deep breath and blows it out. On the official's command he curls his long body forward, gripping the edge of the platform with his fingers. After a breath the buzzer sounds, and he is flying through the air before smoothly breaking the surface of the water. He reappears a few moments later, and the sudden roar of the crowd is deafening. Even the usually unflappable Rosalie is standing in the bleacher space beside me, bouncing on her toes, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. I leap up to stand beside her, the sudden excitement in the pool area coursing through me.

"Go, Edward!" Rose screeches.

Emmett is standing next to her, his booming voice echoing her sentiment as others in the bleachers cheer fervently. I bounce alongside Rose, watching as Edward's swim cap appears and disappears beneath the water. I glance at the clock; I have no idea if he's making good time, but the people around me seem to be getting increasingly animated, and the feeling is contagious.

"Go, Edward!" Rosalie's voice is an octave higher this time, as Edward approaches the far wall of the pool and disappears beneath the water, executing what I assume is a perfect flip-turn and reappearing to head in the opposite direction. His long arms break the water's surface like wings and plant out ahead of him, dragging the rest of his body through the water with seemingly little effort. He is a good body length ahead of the next closest swimmer, and the distance seems to increase slightly with every pull of those muscled arms.

He reaches the starting end of the pool and flips to turn again.

"Holy shit, he might do it!" Emmett exclaims, and I feel a sudden squeeze on my bicep, where Rosalie has grabbed my arm.

"Come on, Edward!" she screeches as he slices through the water, and I find my own voice.

"Go! Go! Go!" In any other situation I'd feel ridiculous, but I can't deny the exhilaration coursing through me as I watch Edward and feel the hopes of the crowd building around me. "Go, Edward!"

His lead has extended to three body lengths, and yet even I realize that he's not racing his opponents anymore but the clock on the wall, ticking off time in hundredths of seconds. "Go!" I screech, and as he approaches the wall for his third and final flip-turn, I feel as though my heart might beat right out of my chest. "Go, Go, Go!"

Edward turns and breaks for the final length, his shoulder muscles bunching and water sluicing off his sculpted back.

"Holy SHIT!" Emmett hollers, just as Rosalie begins a steady chant of "Come on, come on, come ON!"

"GO!"

The screams of the crowd around us match ours as the place reaches the realization of what could be about to happen. I stop bouncing and stand stock still as I watch, suddenly wordless as I hold my breath and Edward's arms make one more arcing swoop through the air and disappear into the water to drag his body to the finish. The clock stops as his fingertips touch the wall, and there is a brief nanosecond of collective held breath as everyone in the stands looks to the clock.

1:44.09.

And it's absolute pandemonium. Rose and Emmett are screaming and hugging and then Rose is hugging me as we jump up and down, the bleachers rumbling beneath us as the rest of the crowd has a similar reaction. I see Edward whip off his goggles and glance at the clock before pumping one fist in the air, turning as he treads water and scanning the bleachers. He finds us and points with both hands, Emmett pointing back at him while Rosalie and I clap above our heads, still screeching. Edward beams, his eyes meeting mine for a split second before he breaks eye contact to scan the crowd again. His gaze falls on someone a few rows down from us and his smile softens slightly as he again pumps his fist and points a finger before winking. I crane my neck but am unable to see over the still-celebrating rows of people ahead of us and return my focus to where Edward is being hauled from the water by his coach, who grabs him in a bear hug and claps him repeatedly on the back.

The announcement over the speaker about the milestone is nearly drowned out by the cheers that still ricochet off the walls, and I continue to watch Edward as he accepts congratulations from his teammates, the confident competitor I'd seen in the water suddenly giving way to a head-hanging, humble college kid.

"Oh my God, I can't believe it," Rosalie breathes beside me as she wipes beneath her eyes to erase any errant traces of mascara. "He did it."

Emmett is still beaming at Edward's back. "That's my boy," he grins, leaning forward to meet my eye around Rose. "You must be his good luck charm," he adds, and I flush. Good luck charm or no, I'm suddenly so, so happy that I didn't miss this.

As the bedlam gradually dies down and another heat of swimmers prepare for their race, I resituate myself next to Rose and crane my neck once again, glancing down the rows of bleachers ahead of us. Unable to identify anyone I recognize, I lean into Rose slightly. "Do you know who Edward was pointing to down there?"

Rose glances down the sloping seats and scans the crowd, frowning slightly until a smile lights her face. "Hey, his family's here! Emmett, look, they came!"

"Where?" I ask, still scanning the sea of heads.

"See the blond guy in the front row?" Rose says, pointing, and I follow the line of her finger to a head of styled fair hair in the front row just to the left of where we're sitting. "That's his dad. Carlisle. Next to him is his mom, Esme, and that's his little sister, Alice." She glances at me, her expression guarded. "Alice had cancer," she says after a moment. "That's why her hair is so short."

I glance at them again, noting the just-too-short-to-be-intentional pixie-like style of the small, dark-haired girl. "Yeah, he told me," I reply, and when I glance back at Rose her eyebrows are nearly at her hairline.

"He told you?" I nod slowly, somewhat taken aback by her surprise, and she shakes her head slightly. "Sorry. I'm just surprised. He doesn't really… tell people that."

"I don't think he planned on it," I admit, remembering my unintentional but significant faux pas. Our conversation is halted by the starting buzzer of the next race, and we return to being dutiful fans for the duration of the meet. Once the last race is over and the swimmers have slipped back into warm-up suits and dispersed, I see Edward making his way toward the bleachers, the strap of a black duffel bag slung diagonally across his torso. He finds my face and offers me a small smile before dropping his gaze to the faces of his family members who are standing below us. Almost instantly, the younger girl launches herself at him and wraps her arms around his neck; I can see his smile as he bands his arms around her waist and lifts her off the floor, holding her tightly for a few moments before lowering her and letting go to ruffle her short, spiky hair. I see his mother wrap her arms around him and hold him for a few beats before stepping back and his father reaching out to shake his hand before pulling him into an embrace and slapping him heartily between the shoulder blades. As he lets go, his mother cradles his jaw in the palm of her hand and says something and I can see a faint blush spread across his cheeks as he murmurs something in return.

"Come on," I hear Rosalie say as she grabs my arm again. "Let's go say hi."

"Um." I hesitate, and Rose's grip tightens.

"Don't be a chicken, Swan. Come on."

Even if I had a valid argument I know better than to disagree with Rose, so I grab my coat and follow her carefully down the bleacher steps, my mind flashing briefly to the sea of embarrassment I would drown in if I were to trip and tumble ass over teakettle down the makeshift staircase. As we approach Edward's family, Esme's smile grows even wider when she spots Emmett and Rosalie.

"Congratulations, buddy!" Emmett booms as he claps a hand on Edward's shoulder; Edward, in response, turns to face us, a smile splitting his beautiful face.

"Thanks, Em," he says, as Rose steps in to hug him and Emmett reaches out to shake Edward's dad's hand.

"We're so proud of you," Rose says, hugging him tightly before stepping back and pushing me toward him as she steps forward to hug his mom.

"Congratulations," I offer, my voice suddenly blocked by a knot of nerves at the back of my throat.

"Thank you," he says gently, and I am vaguely aware of Emmett and Rose making small talk with his parents and sister as we stand a foot apart, staring at each other until his mother's voice breaks our silence.

"Edward, aren't you going to introduce us?"

I'm all set to welcome the blush, but Edward's arm suddenly appears around my waist and he pulls me into his side ever so slightly. "Mom, Dad, Alice, this is Bella Swan. Bella, these are my parents, Carlisle and Esme, and my younger sister, Alice."

"It's nice to meet you," I say, drawing strength from the way his fingers curl around my hipbone – a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by his mother, whose gaze dips to his arm before lifting to my face with a bright smile.

"Oh, it's lovely to meet you, too," she breathes, and her glance at Edward tells me he's going to be on the receiving end of a maternal inquisition as soon as the spotlight of his record-breaking night has dimmed. "We were just going to ask if we could take you out to dinner to celebrate," she says to Edward, who glances at me and back toward his family.

"Uh, I sort of made plans with Bella tonight," he says, and I can tell from his tone that he feels badly. I also see Alice's face fall.

"Oh, God, no, don't worry about it," I say, waving my hand in the space between us as I step away from him slightly. "You go to dinner with your family. This is a big night! We can hang out another time." Even as I'm saying the words, I can feel the edge of disappointment nagging at me.

"Oh, goodness, dear, I meant _all _of you," Esme says quickly, waving her hand to indicate not only me, but Rose and Emmett as well.

"I never turn down an offer of free food," Emmett pipes up, and Rose swats him.

I am opening my mouth to protest when Edward leans down and ghosts a kiss over my temple before breathing into my ear, "Have dinner with us." I glance at his mother, who has witnessed the entire exchange and whose eyes are alight with a blend of badly-disguised curiosity and glee. I can only nod, knowing even as I do that I'm signing up to join Edward in the hot seat of the coming inquisition.

* * *

"Your family's really great," I say as Edward throws the car into park and turns off the ignition.

He beams at me. "Yeah, they are."

"It must be nice to have them so close," I add, unbuckling my seat belt.

"It is," he says, and his smile becomes slightly more devilish. "Though their unannounced arrival tonight put a bit of a crimp in my plans for the evening." He unbuckles his own seat belt and leans toward me. "I had big plans to kiss you over a small dinner table."

"Would you settle for a gearshift?" I half-joke, leaning slightly toward him.

His lips stretch into a smile for a brief second before they settle over mine, and when his mouth opens and I feel the warm, wet swipe of his tongue against my lower lip I am powerless against the small whimper that bubbles up in my throat. He deepens the kiss, winding his long fingers into the loose hair at the nape of my neck as his mouth slides over mine, and we make out in the front seat of his car for an indeterminate amount of time before I pull back, gazing into his face. His eyes are hooded, his cheeks are flushed, and his lips are kiss-bruised and swollen and perfect. I lick my own and his eyes flash as they drop to my mouth.

"Would you like to come in?" he asks my mouth, and I nearly laugh at the absurdity of his question.

"Edward, I left my car at the pool. What do you think?"

Those swollen lips spread into a grin and he pushes his door open as I do the same and follow him up the front steps and into his house. He has barely closed the front door behind us before I'm pinned up against it, his hungry mouth on mine and his hands in my hair. I give as good as I get, sucking his bottom lip between my teeth and relishing in the growl that escapes him. His mouth trails down the side of my neck and he bites gently at my collarbone as I glance around at our surroundings, the foyer shrouded in darkness.

"Edward," I breathe, and he grunts. "Edward, where are your roommates?"

"Don't know, don't care," he mutters into my skin, and I bring my hands up between us to push against his chest. He steps back slightly and gazes down at me, arousal thick and heavy in his eyes.

"Take me upstairs," I breathe, and he wastes no time in grabbing my hand and dragging me up the staircase and down the hall to his door. He all but throws it open, pulling me inside and slamming it behind us before pressing me against it in an instant replay of his actions in the foyer. He swoops in to claim my mouth again, but before he can I press on his chest to halt him, a frustrated growl rumbling in his chest as I attempt to gather my nerve.

"You had a big night tonight," I breathe, watching his chest rise and fall with his slightly labored breaths.

"Yes," he says, his fingers finding the hem of my sweater and lifting it as he lifts an eyebrow in question. I nod slightly, allowing him to pull it up and over my head, gratified by the way he exhales in a rush as his eyes fall on my tank top-clad breasts. "God," he breathes.

"A record-breaking night," I add, though he refuses to be distracted from staring at my chest.

"Yes."

"Will you get a medal?"

His confusion is enough to draw his focus away from my breasts and to my face. "What?"

I trail a single fingertip down the side of his neck and trace the neckline of his t-shirt. "Will you get a medal or a trophy or something?"

A slight frown creases his brow. "I don't know. They'll probably give me a plaque or something. I really don't know."

I continue the path of my fingertip, running it down the soft cotton covering his chest and veering to one side to run a light circle around his hidden nipple. He sucks in a breath. "I only ask because," I pause to span his chest and circle his other nipple, "it seems like you deserve a reward of some kind."

The small crease between his brows remains for mere moments until my implication hits him and his eyes widen slightly, a smile pulling the corners of his mouth up. "I do," he says after a moment, his hands finding the hem of my tank top and slipping beneath it to the bare skin of my stomach. "I absolutely do."

"And I was thinking," I continue, making a valiant effort to ignore his wandering fingertips and keep my voice steady as my own hands lower and grip the hem of his shirt. "I could… _reward_ you and complete my research at the same time."

"That's awfully industrious of you," he breathes, and I take the opportunity to slip his top over his head, delighting in the way it tousles his already-disheveled hair as it slides up and off.

"You should know that I'm very thorough in my research," I continue, hoping I'm still making sense because his hands have returned to my skin and are skating upward, cupping the tops of my ribcage directly below my breasts.

"I can imagine," he says, and my hands flatten against his chest, rubbing over his torso and moving down his chiseled stomach to his waistband. I hesitate for only a moment before ghosting a touch over the button and pressing the heel of my hand to his button fly, where I can feel him straining the denim. He gasps and his head falls back, his eyes closing and his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"I should also tell you that, based on the research I've already conducted, you're in a unique position to break more than one record tonight."

A smug smile is his response, though he doesn't open his eyes. "I'm delighted to hear it," he breathes, and after a beat I undo the top button. When he doesn't stop me, I undo the rest of them and tug gently on the denim, allowing the jeans to fall and pool at his feet. He steps out of them and I eye the considerable swell beneath the dark gray cotton of his boxer-briefs. Tearing my gaze away from the prize that awaits me, I meet his smoldering green eyes and lick my lips as I spin us so that his bare back meets the wood of the door.

"Ready for your prize?" I whisper, and I drop to my knees and reach for his waistband.

"God, yes," he breathes.

When I finally see Edward Cullen's junk without the barrier of purple spandex, it might be the first time in my life that my expectations weren't too high. In fact, I'd say he was being smothered by that tiny strip of fabric, and I'd probably be concerned for the well-being of my own brief-covered parts if I weren't so turned on.

I plant soft, chaste kisses to the insides of his thighs, enjoying the harsh sounds of his breathing, and when I bite the skin at his hipbone a jolt of arousal courses through me at his answering hiss. I lick the skin I've just bitten before running my lips across his pelvis just above where he's straining for me and do the same to his other hip, biting and licking away the sting as he moans. I gently scratch my nails up the insides of his thighs as I plant another kiss to the hair-lined skin beneath his belly button and I hear him whimper softly before I finally pull back and wrap my lips around the weeping tip of him.

He sucks in an audible breath and I hear a muffled thud as his head falls back against the wooden door. I swirl my tongue around the end of him and his fingers tangle themselves in my hair, but I pull back and return my mouth to his hipbone as a harsh groan comes from above me. I trail my mouth along his skin, following it closer and closer to the center of his body until his arousal is sliding against my cheek; I break the contact and go to his other hip and repeat the same pattern as he thrusts helplessly into the air when the skin of my other cheek slides along his length.

"God, Bella, you're killing me," he moans as I take his tip between my lips again, rolling my tongue around the end of him and tasting the salty proof of his excitement. His fingers tighten slightly against my scalp and I smile inwardly at the surge of lust-fueled power rocketing through me. I shift slightly, the ever-mounting evidence of my own arousal damp between my legs and I glance upward to see his eyes on my face. Not breaking our gaze, I pull off him and slip my tongue out from between my lips to flick at his head once before spreading my lips and taking him into my mouth, deeper and deeper until his tip hits the back of my throat. His sudden grip on my hair is nearly painful as his head slams back into the door and his hips twitch as if he is trying to hold himself back from thrusting into my mouth.

"Fuck," he moans, and I can see the muscles and tendons in his neck straining against his skin.

I hold him in my mouth for a few breaths, getting used to the feel of him in my throat while I remain still, before I pull back slightly and begin to let him slip in and out of my mouth, swirling my tongue around his rigid skin and gripping the inches of skin near the base of him that I know I won't be able to fit into my mouth. He grunts as I increase my suction and slide my hand up his thigh to cup his balls, rolling them gently in my hand as I slide the other one up his chest and run a fingertip around his nipple. Despite his efforts to hold back his hips twitch toward my face and I bring my hand back down his body to cup the back of his thigh and pull him into me.

"Fuck, Bella," he moans, taking the cue to begin thrusting shallowly into my mouth. "So good." I continue to stroke and suck and fondle him and his thrusts grow more erratic in time with his breathing as my own arousal continues to climb. "Oh, God. Bella, I'm getting close."

I keep up the rhythm but increase my suction around his shaft slightly as I hear him hiss through his teeth, his hands gripping my hair tightly as his hips continue to buck into my mouth. "Unh," he moans, and I can feel the thigh muscles beneath my palm tensing. "Unh." His legs begin to shake, and I hear him gasping. "Bella, God, fuck, Bella, I'm coming."

I pull him into me and suck hard, taking him as deep into my throat as I can. I feel him pulse and throb before the warm ribbons of his release coat the back of my throat and he roars, his head finding the door once again, his face a rictus of ecstasy. I swallow around him and he shudders; I run my tongue languidly around his softening length and he trembles above me as I slowly pull back, sliding the length of him out of my lips before placing a chaste kiss to the skin beneath his belly button.

"Jesus," he breathes, his head still tipped back; I rise and plant soft kisses to the side of his neck. Punch-drunk green eyes open and focus on me, and a lazy, satisfied smile slides across his face. "Who needs a medal?"

I return his smile and cup his jaw in my hand. "You liked your reward, then?"

His smile widens and his head lolls back and forth against the wood of the door. "I'm too blissed out to bring the banter," he says, "but I'll break every record in the book if it means I can experience _that_ again." A giggle escapes me and he leans forward to press a kiss to my mouth; I hesitate, knowing I taste of him, but he pushes and his tongue enters my mouth, setting my own arousal aflame. "And I find myself indebted to you again," he murmurs against my lips. "What do you say we see about settling the score?"

"Aren't we even?"

"Does it matter?" he says, backing me toward his bed. "If so, consider it a reward for your due diligence." The backs of my knees meet the edge of his mattress and I allow myself to tumble backwards as his nimble fingers make quick work of the button of my jeans, sliding them down my legs and leaving me in a tank top and panties. He pauses, gazing down at me, and suddenly the playful Edward is gone and a more serious Edward is in his place. "God, you're beautiful," he mumbles, almost to himself, as his hands find the hem of my top. He slides it up and off and as he stares down at me lying in the pool of moonlight filtering through his bedroom window there's a fire behind his eyes. "So beautiful."

He steps toward me and I scoot back to his pillows, reclining on my elbows and watching the muscles of his shoulders bunching as he crawls up the bed toward me. When his mouth finds mine, I wrap my arms around his neck and lay back, Edward settling his weight on top of me, his naked body held in the cradle of my thighs. One of his hands ghosts down between us and slides over the damp strip of black satin between my legs; he grunts as I moan and wraps his fingers around the waistband of the briefs, hesitating for only a moment to give me a chance to stop him before he is sliding them down my legs. I kick them off and he angles his body to one side, those long fingers sliding back up my thigh and then through slick folds as his eyes roam my face.

"God, Edward," I breathe, bucking my hips slowly into his exploring fingertips, gasping as they slide over the bundle of nerves screaming for his attention. "Yes."

"Yeah?" he breathes, lowering his head to take my earlobe between his teeth and continuing his torturously slow circles against my flesh.

"Please," I whimper, trying to speed things up by lifting my hips. He slides his fingers around me once, twice more before dipping them down to slide two inside my body. I arch off the bed, bowing into his hand as he slides slowly in and out of me before adding a third finger and I cry out, loving the feel of being filled by him at the same time I want more. "Please," I say again, and I can feel the hot length of him against my thigh, hard as steel again already.

"Please what?" he murmurs, his hips rocking slightly against my thigh as he continues to finger me, picking up the pace and using his thumb to tease my clit.

"I want you," I say, my hips shamelessly meeting the thrusts of his hand, my fingers clutching the dark gray bed sheet.

"What do you want?"

"Please," I whisper, breathless, and as his fingers thrust in and out of me I can feel my peak approaching. "I want to come around you."

"Fuck, Bella," he gasps, continuing to fuck me with one hand while his other reaches toward his nightstand and fumbles in the drawer. "God, I want you." His fingers leave me trembling and needy as they work to unwrap the condom; as he slides it down his sizeable length, I bite my lip, realizing that I'm about to have every inch of Edward Cullen inside me. I should be apprehensive, but I'm too damn turned on to think about anything besides coming around the length of him.

He braces himself over me with his hands beside my head and presses his hips to mine, bending down to suck a nipple into the warm cavern of his mouth. I whimper and arch up into him, pressing my wet core against his body, delighting in his gasp. He moves to the other side and captures my other nipple, biting slightly at the peaked flesh before lowering himself to frame my head with his elbows. "Put me in," he breathes into my neck, and I slip a hand down between our bodies to find him, hard and pulsing and pressed between us. I line his tip up with the heart of me and guide it in before sliding both my hands to cup his hips. "God," he breathes, pressing his forehead to mine as he slides in a little farther. I shift as I adjust to his entry and he grunts as I move around him, murmuring "so tight" into the pillowcase beside my ear. He slides deeper and my breath hitches; it's been awhile, but even if it hadn't, he'd still be stretching me. He pulls back to look into my face. "You okay?"

I smile. "My assessment was right," I breathe, as the slight discomfort gives way to immense pleasure at being so full. "Record-breaking."

He snickers, but the laugh dies on his lips as I experimentally clench my inner walls around him. "Holy shit." He slides the rest of the way into me and pauses for a moment to let me adjust before he begins his retreat, sliding nearly all the way out before returning until our hips meet. My eyes drift shut as I focus on the feel of his rigid length sliding in and out of me, and when I begin to meet his thrusts he speeds up slightly, sliding his arms in to curl his fingers around my shoulders.

"God, Edward," I moan, my clit rubbing against his pelvic bone and spreading a familiar warmth through me; suddenly he angles his hips and his thrusts pick up speed and I cry out as he finds the spot inside me.

"There?" he asks, pulling back slightly to look at my face for confirmation.

"There," I pant as he continues his rhythm, hitting where I need him over and over as his pelvis continues to graze my clit. "Oh, God, don't stop."

"Come around me," he grits out, his words increasingly breathless. "I want to feel you come around me."

"Yes," I breathe, the steady slapping of our meeting skin audible in the darkness, green eyes boring down into me as his hips piston in and out of me, flattening me against his mattress. "So close."

"God, so close," he echoes, and I can feel his rhythm faltering slightly.

"Coming," I gasp, clutching at the skin of his back with my fingers as he drives into me, holding himself deep and swiveling his pelvic bone against my flesh as I seize and shudder around him. "God, I'm coming." My body is shuddering and my shoulders nearly arch up off the bed as waves of ecstasy flow over me, my inner walls contracting around the thick, hard length of him. "Fuck, Edward."

"So fucking hot," he gasps as the tension leaves my muscles and the tremors become less intense. He resumes his thrusts and I gasp as he slides against my hypersensitive flesh. "I need to come," he begs and I clutch his ass as he pistons in and out of me.

"Yes," I urge as he brings his chest flush with mine, burying his face in the crook of my neck. "Come inside me," I say, claiming his earlobe between my teeth, and he hisses and curses and goes rigid as I feel him throbbing and pulsing and emptying into the condom inside me. After a beat he goes boneless on top of me, his weight pressing me down into the mattress, and I wrap my legs around his hips and ghost my fingertips up and down his back. He moans, a satisfied, blissed-out moan this time, and I smile at the ceiling.

"Incredible," he murmurs into my hair, and he we stay joined for a beat until he pulls back, holding on to the bottom of the condom as he slides out of me, kissing me on the mouth before rolling toward his nightstand and grabbing a tissue to dispose of it.

"Long live the banana hammock," I reply and he chuckles, rolling back toward me and gathering me in his arms to kiss me lazily, his tongue dancing around in my mouth. We lay in his bed, blissful and spent, sharing languid kisses and caresses and ghosting touches across the planes of each other's skin until I feel him begin to harden against my hip again. He releases my mouth and drops a line of kisses along my jaw before lowering his mouth to my neck.

"If I may be so cocky," he breathes, descending to place a close-mouthed kiss on my sternum. "I do believe you implied that I broke more than just one record tonight." Another kiss, slightly lower this time. "There was my record for speed," he murmurs, kissing the skin between my breasts. "Then my record for size." He kisses the underside of my left breast. "It seems to me," a kiss to the underside of my right, "that there is at least one more to go." He kisses the expanse of skin between my ribs.

"What would that one be?" I ask, the breathless quality of my voice nullifying any cheekiness I was going for.

He pins me with a stare as his hands pin my wrists above my head. "Multiplicity."

And break it he does.


	2. The Return of the Purple Banana Hammock

**The Return of the Purple Banana Hammock **

**Summary: **Here's the thing about college romances: they don't always work out.

**Rating: **M

**Disclaimer:** Trust me on this. Also, I was overwhelmed by the response to the first chapter - my first "Twilight" story - and couldn't say no to the people who requested more of these two. Besides, I was offered homemade cookies, boob-gropes, and Edward's banana; how could I refuse?

_HollettLA offers invaluable guidance, fixes my craptastic comma placement, and unintentionally cracks me up with notes like "comma after 'balls'." I win in the beta department; she is faaaaaabulous. *jazz-hands*_

* * *

**January 2012**

Here's the thing about college romances: they don't always work out. In fact, a _lot_ of the time they don't work out. There are a whole host of reasons why loves that flare hot and bright early on don't wind up being sustained burns, though I suspect that in many cases they often boil down to the same reason: that people who meet when they're nineteen or twenty or twenty-one aren't done growing yet. They're still figuring out who they are and, perhaps just as importantly, who they want to be. It's hard to be certain that you're still going to love someone in five years when you're not entirely sure who that person will be by that point, not to mention you're not sure who _you'll_ be.

Then, of course, there are the other reasons that are so common with young love: infidelity, pregnancy scares, waning chemistry, sexually transmitted infections.

In my case, the reason was so simple as to be nearly black and white. In fact, I can't figure out if the simplicity is insulting or comforting in its complete and utter lack of ambiguity. That reason: geography.

The simple fact of the matter is that you can meet a guy when you're twenty-two who you could definitely-maybe see yourself marrying one-day-someday-no-time-soon-but-maybe-when-I've-got-my-Real-Life-started. He can be brilliant and funny and tender and mind-bendingly good-looking and hung like a purebred stallion and have a family you adore that adores you in return. He can be perfect and perfectly flawed.

_And yet._

If you both graduate from a prestigious university, and one of you gets into medical school at Stanford, and the other gets a once-in-a-lifetime graduate journalism fellowship through the _Washington Post_, you have to cut your losses because you both have to go.

You can't _not _go.

He can't _not_ go.

These are the goals you've been working toward for years, and maybe if you'd been together longer than a few months it would wind up being a different conversation, but you haven't. And it doesn't. Which is how you wind up here, scanning his Facebook page from your apartment in Georgetown four years later.

. . .

The lack of online updates in the life of Edward Cullen is oddly distressing considering I haven't been a part of his life for nearly that long. Following our amicable if sad breakup after we both graduated from Northwestern and were headed for opposite coasts, we kept in touch for a while with phone calls and e-mails until we agreed that it felt awkward and difficult and, frankly, not unlike beating a dead horse. I suggested taking some space so we could each get acclimated to our new lives and he readily agreed; thereafter our contact was limited to phone calls on birthdays and holidays and ultimately dwindled to text messages on similar occasions. When Rosalie and Emmett shot my college sweetheart theory to hell by getting married last year, I spent weeks after I received the Save the Date card imagining the reunion with Edward: what he would look like, if he'd bring a date, if he'd show up alone and we'd relive the glory days that all began with a tiny purple swimsuit. It wasn't until I RSVP'ed by phone to Rose, having forgotten to send my response card in by the deadline, that I learned Edward wasn't going, that he had a clinical rotation and couldn't take the time off to travel to Chicago.

So while the lack of updates is cause for anxiety, of equal concern is the fact that I'm sitting alone in my apartment on a Friday night with a glass of wine and my laptop, Internet-stalking a guy I dated for a handful of months a lifetime ago. A lifetime, because the gap between who you are when you're twenty-two and who you're becoming when you're twenty-six is so much more significant than the gap between when you're thirty and thirty-four or forty-two and forty-six.

Even more alarming is the increasing frequency with which I find myself doing this exact thing, wondering if his lack of updates is due to his hectic schedule or his general distaste for technology in general and social media in particular. Wondering who the blonde girl is who tagged him in his most recent photo. Wondering when he cut his hair, and if swimming is the reason his sweater still pulls taut across his shoulders or if he's taken up some new form of exercise. Wondering if he still wears black Calvin Klein boxer briefs, if he still likes to be nipped on the soft curve of his neck beneath his ear, and if there's a girl out in California who knows the answers to all of these questions.

* * *

**February 2008**

"So, Bella, Edward tells us that you're hoping to get into international news media?" Carlisle Cullen cuts his steak like a surgeon while he speaks, and I wonder if it's an occupational hazard as I nod and spear a broccoli floret.

"Yes," I say before lifting the vegetable to my mouth. "Although my decision to major in journalism given the current climate in the field makes me either a die-hard optimist or a complete moron."

Edward's father chuckles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. Idly, I wonder if Edward will have eye-crinkles when he gets older before Carlisle's voice brings me back to the table. "There will always be a need for journalists, even if the method of disseminating the information changes," he says, and once again I'm struck by how much I genuinely _like_ this family.

"Thank you for that," I say sincerely. "My dad thinks I'm a glutton for punishment."

"Well, that may be true too," Alice offers as she chews on the straw of her soda. "You are dating Edward, after all." She tosses a teasing smirk at her brother, who rolls his eyes in artificial irritation.

"Can it, sprite. And I'd be very careful if I were you; Mom told me alllll about this Seth clown from drama club."

"Mom!" Alice's indignant shriek doesn't go unnoticed by the other restaurant patrons, and Esme Cullen waves a hand dismissively.

"Oh, Alice, he's teasing you." She turns to me. "I'm so glad you joined us again, Bella. With Emmett and Rosalie and all of the swimming excitement, the last time we had dinner was so chaotic." She's right; Rosalie was a buffer for which I was exceedingly grateful during my first unexpected foray into the "meet the parents" experience, and beyond a request to call them Carlisle and Esme in lieu of Mr. and Mrs. Cullen, small talk was minimal and probing get-to-know-you talk was nonexistent.

"Excuse me," Edward interjects in mock indignation, and Esme pats his forearm distractedly.

"In the best possible way, darling," she says before turning back to me. "But I didn't get a chance to really talk with Bella. Tell me, how did you and Edward meet?"

I bite my lip, feeling immediately stupid for not anticipating this question. Telling Edward's mother that we met in the office of the dean of students after I was summoned there by said dean for writing an article in the student newspaper about her son's considerable penis seems ill-advised, not to mention in exceedingly poor taste.

"Bella is on the newspaper staff," Edward says, cutting his steak. "They wrote a story about the swim team, and we met because of it."

I toss him a grateful smile, and he smirks at me around a mouthful of food. I know that smirk; he's going to cite his rescue of damsel-in-distress Bella as a reason for sexual favors later. I arch a knowing eyebrow at him, and he grins before dropping his eyes back to his plate. The slight flush of his cheeks warms me, and I love that I have this effect on him.

"That's a lovely story," Esme says, entirely oblivious to our flirting and the considerable omissions from the account of our first meeting. "Nowadays all you hear couples saying is that they met on the Internet; your story is so wholesome." I bite my lip and stab another piece of broccoli.

"Don't let my mother fool you," Edward says to me. "She met my father when she wasn't wearing pants."

"Edward Anthony Cullen," Carlisle says in reprimand, but his blue eyes are twinkling as he looks at Esme, a small smile pulling at his mouth. She grins back at him and it's no wonder Edward is so liberal with his affection: his parents are making moony-eyes at each other over a restaurant table after more than twenty years of marriage. My mind flits briefly to Charlie, whose gruff love was the model around which I built my concept of affectionate relationships, and I feel suddenly sad for him. I wonder if he was more demonstrative with his love before my mother unceremoniously dumped him in favor of a life with zero obligations.

"I was wearing a hospital gown," Esme clarifies, pretending to glare at her son. "It's not as if I was spinning around on a pole in stilettos and lingerie."

"Ew," Alice says, dropping her fork with a clatter. "Thanks for that image at the _dinner table_, Mom."

"Seriously," Edward says, staring dejectedly at his own plate. "Way to ruin a guy's appetite."

"You went there first, darling," Esme reminds him, a singsong quality to her voice, and I don't even try to hide my smile. I think I love his mother. "Anyway, as I was saying… a lovely story." I glance over at Edward, and despite Esme's overly descriptive denial he's wearing a small smile not unlike his father's.

"And your father is a police officer, is that right?" Esme continues. "Alice, phone," she says quickly, snapping her fingers, and Alice grumbles something unintelligible as she slides her cell phone back beneath the table.

"Chief of police," Edward corrects her.

"I'm from a really small town," I clarify quickly. "Chief of police in Forks doesn't mean what it does in a city like Chicago, but my dad's good at what he does. They tried to recruit him to the Washington State Patrol when I was in grade school, but he wanted to stay put."

Esme nods. "Sounds like your father and Carlisle would get along like a house afire," she says, tossing a sideways smile at her husband. "Carlisle was offered a head of surgery position when Edward was a toddler, but he opted to stay in the small family practice setting."

"Never regretted it once," Edward's father says with a wave of his fork. "Now Bella, tell me about growing up in the Pacific Northwest. I've never been to that part of the country myself."

. . .

Hours later, Edward and I are wrapped around each other on his sofa, sharing a bowl of popcorn beneath a fleece blanket while _Atonement_ plays in the DVD player.

"Do you have anything chocolate?" I whisper into the darkness, my eyes still glued to the glowing television screen.

"Um, I think I might have some Goobers in the kitchen." He nods toward the bowl in my lap. "Not feeling the popcorn?"

This time, I turn to face him. "You've never had chocolate and popcorn together?"

He frowns slightly. "You know, I don't think so."

"Oh my God, you poor, deprived boy. Go. I'll pause this."

Edward rises obediently from the couch and disappears into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bag of Goobers. "Okay, Swan. Enlighten me."

"Much to learn, you have," I tell him.

"Yoda? Nice." He resettles next to me and pulls the fleece blanket back over our laps.

"Okay," I say, holding the popcorn bowl out. "Take a handful." As he does, I tear the corner off the bag of candy and tip a few into his other palm. "Eat."

He shovels the kernels into his mouth and then the chocolate, and he chews thoughtfully for a moment before his eyes fall closed and his head tips back against the sofa. "Jesus. My life will never be the same."

"See?" I'm cocky as I press play on the DVD remote. "I told you."

"Right as usual," he says, grabbing another handful of popcorn and holding his hand out for more chocolate. We kill the popcorn and the candy as the movie plays, and when all that remains is a crumpled wrapper and a bowl of unpopped kernels, I suck salt from my fingers. As I lick my lips, Edward is suddenly at my ear. "Wait," he breathes, and he angles forward to cover my mouth with his. He groans softly when his tongue invades my mouth, and I return the sentiment as it traces my lips. When he breaks the kiss and pulls back, I stare up at him through a cloud of arousal as he makes a show of licking his lips. "Tastes even better on you."

"You're missing the movie." My protest is half-hearted as he presses a kiss to the hollow of my shoulder.

"What movie?" he asks into my skin, leaning forward until I'm horizontal on the couch with him lying on top of me. He pulls away to mute the TV, and the flickering light of the screen is dancing over our skin when he finds my lips again. We make out shamelessly in his living room, his mouth soft at first and then increasingly hungry before pulling back and becoming soft once more. Conversely, I can feel the hard length of him pressing into me, and my own hips rise to meet him. His hand slides up beneath the hem of my sweater, and I hiss into his mouth when his fingertips dip under the wire of my bra to find my nipple. He moans softly and presses harder with his hips, and his breathless voice in my ear brings me up short. "God, I want to fuck you right here."

"Edward, wait," I gasp, my hands clutching at his muscled shoulders. "We can't."

"Emmett's at Rosalie's and Jasper went home to visit his family. No one's coming home," he assures me as he slides his hand back down my torso to find the button of my jeans. I still his hand and he pulls away to search my face. "Bella?"

I bite my lip. "We can't," I say again, and he smiles softly at me.

"It's okay." He cups my jaw in his gentle palm. "If you're uncomfortable we can go upstairs. Hell, Bella, I'll take you anywhere I can get you."

I shake my head and pull the hem of my sweater back down. "No, I don't mean we can't here. I mean we can't _anywhere._"

He frowns. "I don't understand."

"I can't. I mean…" I bite my lip and frown. This is so ridiculous. I'm a twenty-two-year-old woman, for crying out loud. I should be able to say "I have my period" without making it a big issue, but I grew up with a single father who opted to pretend I didn't have a menstrual cycle and who passed the majority of one week every month spending as much time as humanly possible away from the house he shared with his hormonal teenage daughter. Charlie let the Washington State school health curriculum handle my birds-and-bees talk, and when I came home from school that week he handed me Sue Clearwater's cell phone number in case I "had any questions. About anything. Ever."

"Bella?" Edward's concern is growing the longer I stay silent, and I huff. Suddenly, his eyes widen slightly and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Is this a biological girl-thing?" I nod and suddenly I can't look at him. Apparently I'm thirteen again. When he chuckles, I peek up at him, and I can only imagine that my face is murderous. "Oh, Bella."

"Stop laughing at me," I mutter and he only chuckles again.

"Sorry. Can't help it. You're the ball-buster who has absolutely no fear of being reamed by the dean of a major university, but you blush and stammer and hide your face in the blankets over something like this. It's cute."

"Shut up."

"Why?"

"Guys don't want to hear about that stuff. I was trying to be discreet."

"I don't want to hear about anyone else's menstrual calendar, Bella, but I'm quite fond of your anatomy. Consider this an open invitation to be as forthcoming with me as you're comfortable with."

I peek up at him. "You want me to tell you when I'm off-limits?"

This time, his laugh is an outright guffaw. "Well, if we're classifying it that way, you should absolutely tell me so that I don't get my hands slapped. But does this have to mean that you're entirely off-limits? I'm a pretty creative guy."

I frown. "I don't know how I feel about that."

He grins devilishly. "Well, let me see if I can convince you."

* * *

**January 2012**

I jump at the sudden thud of a behemoth stack of papers landing beside my elbow and look up into the pinched face of Jessica.

"I fucking hate my job. And my boss." She shrugs out of her coat and dumps her purse on the floor beside the table. "And my car, which has nothing to do with the others except that it crapped out on me again this morning and stranded me in Dupont Circle, expounding the fucking nightmare that is breaking down in D.C."

"Jesus," I say in sympathy as she collapses into the chair across from me. "Maybe we should have met at a bar instead of a coffee shop."

"If we'd met at a bar, I'd be on a one-way street to alcoholism," she sighs, then glances at my half-empty coffee mug. "Are you eating?"

I shrug, capping my pen and closing my notebook and burying both back in my bag. "I was waiting for you; I could go either way."

She shakes her head. "I'd mainline caffeine right now. Coffee is perfect." As if she's been summoned, a waitress appears at our table and Jessica orders a coffee and I request a refill. "So," she says once the waitress has disappeared again. "How did it go?"

"How did what go?" I ask.

"The date? With that guy from my office?"

"Oh. It was fine." My complete lack of enthusiasm could not be more obvious and Jessica rolls her eyes.

"You know, for a journalist you're not great with the synonyms. 'Fine' is exactly the same word you have used for the past three dates you've told me about."

I shrug. "It's entirely accurate. No synonyms necessary."

"So what was wrong with this one?"

"Nothing," I say. "He was fine. It was fine. Everything was fine. But that's it: it was fine. Not great. Not wonderful. Not even all that fun. Just fine. And I don't have the time or patience to waste my days on 'fine.'"

"Okay, well, I officially give up. That's the last blind date I'm setting you up on."

"Thank God for small favors," I mutter, but I smile at her to soften my words. As I open my mouth to change the subject, I see the screen of my phone illuminate with a Facebook alert.

_Edward Cullen commented on your photo._

What? Edward is hardly ever even _on_ Facebook, let alone actually interacting with people via Facebook. I should know, given my cyber-stalking tendencies. I try determinedly to ignore the alert, and the screen of my phone goes black once again, but knowing that there's a comment waiting for me from Edward of all people makes me curious and anxious and not a little bit ecstatic. Still, I refuse to be one of those people who is constantly tapping away at her smartphone in the presence of a real, in-the-flesh friend, so I slide my phone from the tabletop and deposit it into the side pocket of my bag to refocus on Jessica.

"What about you? How are things with…" I freeze, my mind a complete blank, and Jessica smirks. "Jesus, I'm a shitty friend," I moan, shaking my head. "I'm so sorry."

"Mmhmm," she replies, one perfectly plucked eyebrow arching.

"Josh!" I cry, snapping my fingers. "How are things with _Josh_?"

She shakes her head. "Josh is past tense," she informs me as a steaming mug appears before her and my own is topped off. She thanks the waitress and grabs a single packet of Sugar in the Raw from the small caddy on the tabletop. "I should know better by now than to date a lobbyist. Especially in an election year." I nod in commiseration. It's hard not to date a politico or two when you live in D.C., but like Jessica, I've learned that if you're not in the game yourself it can make for some complicated and exhausting relationship terrain. Jessica continues, and I suspect that the ease with which she changes topics is probably mirrored in her dating habits. "I am, however, seeing Raul."

"Well, tell me about Raul. Whose name I absolutely swear to remember between now and our next conversation."

Jessica does as requested, filling me in on her new beau – twenty-nine, Cuban, and a chef – before the conversation moves to work. After graduating, Jess decided that she wasn't entirely in love with the world of journalism and opted instead to go into publishing; on a recommendation from a professor at Northwestern, she was able to secure an entry-level position at a publishing house in D.C. Much to her chagrin, she hasn't moved up the ladder at all in the past four years, and the editor she works under is a schmuck.

"I'm starting to think I should have stuck with newspapers," she sighs, taking another sip of her coffee.

"I don't know," I argue. "We're looking at our fourth downsize in two years."

"Well, at least you're safe," she assures me. "You were smart to join the online division. If there's any part of a newspaper that will survive, that's it."

I shrug. "Maybe."

She frowns. "Bloom off the rose?"

"No. It's fine."

"Oh no, not the dreaded 'fine.'" She offers me a small smile, but her eyes are concerned. "Seriously, is everything okay?"

"Fine," I say, offering her a smirk of my own. "I just… everything's fine. My job is fine, my life is fine."

"Thought you didn't have time for fine," she says, and she's unwittingly hitting the nail on the head. Everything about my life is fine, and if I were being honest with her and myself, I'm terrified of rocking the boat even as I'm starting to crave more than the status quo.

By the time I've said goodbye to Jessica and am walking along the sidewalk toward home, my nose and mouth hidden from the biting wind by my fleece scarf, my phone is dead. "Son of a bitch," I mutter, pressing the "home" button to no avail. "Mother-humping technology." Really it's my own fault for reading blogs on my phone all day and playing Words With Friends, but the lack of battery life has never bothered me nearly so much as it does in this moment. I am craving a hot chocolate or a hot tea even as coffee sloshes in my otherwise empty stomach, and as I rush along, my heart thuds in my chest almost in time with the rhythm of my boots on the pavement. My mind flashes to the last words to appear on my iPhone screen before it went dead.

_Edward Cullen commented on your photo._

The amount of anticipation I'm feeling as a result of those six little words is utterly ridiculous, and I silently berate myself as I climb the brick steps of my front stoop. One of the things about my life than is more than fine is my living situation: I adore my apartment in the Avon Place part of Georgetown. When I got a scholarship for my undergrad degree, Charlie confessed that he'd been putting money away for my college tuition since I was born. Since I didn't need hardly any of it to fund my education, he told me to put it away for something else I'd need, and while I fought him on it and told him to keep it for his retirement, he was adamant that the money was mine. After a year in a truly offensive studio in a less-than-stellar neighborhood when I first moved to D.C., I found my current residence on Craigslist and dipped into Charlie's money to make it happen.

When the front door clicks shut behind me, I stand inside it for a beat, hugging my coat around me and attempting to shake off the bitter chill of the winter air as I hear the telltale click of claws on the hardwood floor.

"Hey, Watson," I greet, scratching him behind his floppy ears. Brown eyes find mine and a pink tongue lolls in greeting. "Have you been a good boy?" His long tail wags lazily as I turn

on the lamp just inside the door and kick off my boots before dumping my bag on the floor and shrugging out of my coat. Watson follows me as I pad to the kitchen in my socks and turn on the kettle, forcing myself to remain in the kitchen long enough for it to boil and for me to make myself a mug of Earl Grey. I hook Watson up with a rawhide before returning to the living room. Unable to stave off my curiosity any longer, I retrieve my laptop from its sometime home on my bookshelf and sink into the sofa cushions, opening the computer and navigating to my Facebook page.

_Edward Cullen commented on your photo._

My heart hitches in my chest as I click on the small notification at the top of my screen; I am redirected to a photo I was tagged in a week prior, taken at the party following the awards dinner at which I received a press association award for in-depth online coverage.

_I can't help wondering if a certain column speculating on swimmers' physiques was included in the portfolio of work you submitted for this particular honor._

My pulse picks up and I click in the space to reply.

_It wasn't. Though I will always reserve a special place in my heart for that column._

Before I can wonder if my words are too candid, too telling, I hit "Enter" and then click on Edward's name to revisit his profile page. Nothing new since the most recent photo posted by the mystery blond over a month ago. Clicking on the picture, I allow myself thirty seconds to gaze at his still-familiar face before shaking my head and clicking back to my News Feed. A few moments later, another red "1" pops up in my notifications bar and I click on it.

_Edward Cullen commented on your photo._

Heart rate slightly spiked, I click through to the photo again.

_Seriously though, Bella. Congratulations. That's quite an achievement. You should be very proud._

I see as I glance toward the right-hand sidebar of my browser window that his name sits beside a little green circle, and I drum my fingertips on the armrest of my sofa for a moment. That little green dot looks a hell of a lot like a traffic light, and green means go.

_Bella Swan: Thank you, Edward. That's very nice of you to say._

There is a long pause, and just as I'm about to curse myself and log off, his reply comes through.

_Edward Cullen: Hey, I didn't even know you could chat on this thing! What was that old messaging software everybody was obsessed with back in the day?_

I smile at my screen.

_Bella Swan: AIM?_

_Edward Cullen: Yeah… the one with the away messages and buddy lists?_

_Bella Swan: That's the one._

_Edward Cullen: So we're basically going in circles with the technology now._

_Bella Swan: It would appear so._

_Edward Cullen: Fantastic. So I can stop paying attention and we'll eventually get back to MS-DOS?_

_Bella Swan: Did you ever really start paying attention in the first place?_

_Edward Cullen: Valid point. Listen, Bella, I hate to run but I've got a major exam next week and I have a study group starting in fifteen minutes._

_Bella Swan: Of course! No problem… good luck with the studying._

_Edward Cullen: Thanks. It was__great talking to you._

_Bella Swan: Likewise._

_Edward Cullen: And congratulations again._

_Bella Swan: Thank you. Bye, Edward._

_Edward Cullen: Bye, Bella._

_Edward Cullen is offline._

I sit staring at my computer screen for a beat before closing Facebook and my laptop and sipping my now-lukewarm tea. And for the first time in a while, I feel something less than fine.

* * *

**March 2008**

"God, Edward," I gasp, gazing down my body to where he is pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the insides of my thighs. Warm hands bracket my hips, holding me to the bed, and his mouth finds the curve of my hipbone; when he bites down gently, my body clenches in response. The slow burn is nearly more than I can handle, but if there's anything I've learned in the past month or so, it's that Edward will take care of me. He shifts his body slightly to the side to nip at my other hip, and I can see the tip of his now-familiar length poking up behind the waistband of his boxer-briefs. The tease is nearly enough to make me beg, and I let my head fall back to the pillow in surrender. "Please."

I feel him shake his head, his nose brushing tauntingly against the plane of skin beneath my belly button. "I seem to remember you teasing me like this once before," he murmurs into my flesh and I whimper. "You know what they say about payback." He leaves the space between my hips and slides back up my body, his torso brushing against my thighs as his warm mouth finds my nipple. I rub my legs together, desperate for any friction, but he catches my knees in his hands and pries them apart, pinning them to the mattress and pulling back to gaze down into my face, one eyebrow cocked in playful reprimand. "I think I like you like this," he says conversationally, his hands still restraining my legs as he licks a ring around my nipple. "All desperate and wanton for me." He trails a line of kisses up the side of my neck before pulling back to look down at me again. "Wet and wanting."

And I do. I am. _Wanting_. It's the best descriptor there is for how I feel about him, and that's not limited to the sex, though in this moment it's all I'm able to focus on. "Please," I say again, nearly mindless with want. I glance down between us once more, and the head of his erection is still teasing me from behind the band of his underwear.

"And begging," he murmurs, but as he releases my knees to slide his hands up my thighs, I know he's going to have mercy on me. "I definitely like you begging."

Though he might like hearing me beg, he doesn't make me continue, peeling his boxers down his legs and kicking them off before sheathing himself slowly inside my body with a long groan. He holds still for a breath, pressing a kiss to my temple before he plants his palms on the mattress to either side of me and begins a slow give and take, arching his torso away from mine to watch my face as he presses deeper. In turn, I watch him: the flexing muscles of his shoulders and biceps as he supports his body, the shifting tendons of his neck as his jaw falls slack, the heaving planes of his chest as his breathing catches. I meet his eyes for a beat before his penetrating gaze releases me to watch his literal penetration, long lashes sweeping his cheekbones as he looks down to where we are joined.

"Look at you," he breathes as he slides slowly out of me. "Taking all of me." And I am, my heels digging into the bed for leverage as I meet his every thrust. "So fucking sexy," he says, his hand finding my hip and holding me down as he drives back in with more force. "The way you take me, you're so fucking sexy."

We've been doing this for a month now, yet every time it feels like he reaches a new place inside me. This time, when he rolls us over and pulls my hips down to his, I whimper in surprise as he impales me on his length.

"Okay?" he grits out, teeth clenched, and I nod.

"Deep," I tell him and he nods, rubbing circles into my hipbones with his thumbs and giving me a breath to adjust. I take control of our movement, rocking slowly atop him as his eyes dart from my face to my breasts to the apex of my thighs and back to my breasts before finding my eyes.

"So beautiful," he says, his voice a gravelly murmur as my pace increases. He lets me undulate against him for a few moments before his hands leave my hips and he sits up, sliding his palms up my back and curling his fingers around my shoulders to pull me forcefully down onto him, driving his hips upward at the same moment to hit a new depth inside of me, and I cry out in surprise at the delicious twinge of pain.

"Sorry," he bites out as he presses his nose against the column of my neck. "Too much?"

I shake my head as I wrap my hands around his shoulders, rocking slightly as I surrender control to him. He stays nearly still for a beat, rolling his hips infinitesimally as if to remind me that he's still there, stretching and claiming me, even as he pauses to let me mold around him. "Okay?"

"Better than," I whisper, and his fingers tighten around my shoulders as he thrusts his hips and pulls me down again.

"God," I gasp, tipping my head back to gaze unseeingly at the ceiling and feeling puffs of his warm, damp breath on my neck.

"Bella," he pants, and after a few thrusts he runs his hands back down my sides and to my hips, moving me forcefully over him before lying back against the pillows. His hands find mine and he tugs them gently, guiding them upward so that my palms are pressed flat against the wall above the bed, my torso stretched out over him. "Ride me," he pleads, watching my breasts sway above him as he holds my wrists for a moment. "Finish me off like this." He lets go of my hands and cups my breasts as I begin to thrust, letting his length slide wetly in and out of me and taking him as deeply as I can. His eyes drift closed and he abandons my breasts to cup my ass, pressing up into me on every one of my downward thrusts.

I feel my own crest approaching and I tilt my hips slightly to press my clit to his pubic bone in search of the friction I know will send me tumbling over; the slight change in angle makes him suck in an audible breath and his jaw clenches.

"Bella, I'm there," he gasps, his hips driving into me, his length impaling me, his muscles clenching.

"Go," I urge him, my own movements growing choppy, and as my climax washes over me, I feel him go rigid and arch beneath me before he pours into my body. We both moan low and long, our hips pressed flush together as our mutual orgasm rockets through us, and when the wave of my pleasure ebbs, I unlock my arms, collapsing on top of him and panting into his neck. My body is still rippling around him, even as he softens in the slickness of our combined release, and he moans softly as he registers the aftershocks.

"God," he mumbles, his voice sated and pleasure-drunk. "That's almost enough to make me hard all over again."

"Thank God for almost," I reply, my voice just as slurred with pleasure as his. "Some of us need a little recovery time."

He chuckles and bands his arms around my waist as he rolls us over and resettles atop me, slipping out of my body as he does so. He's warm and shuddering in my arms, still panting slightly, and I reach behind him to drag the quilt up from his waist to his shoulders before rewrapping my arms around his back and lightly tracing his spine with my fingernails.

"You're never supposed to say 'I love you' for the first time post-orgasm," he blurts into my neck, and I pause in my gentle scratching of his muscled back. "I do know that."

"That's a stupid rule," I say, going for casual even as my heart resumes the pounding that was only just starting to abate. When he pulls back to look into my face, I try valiantly to appear unruffled but when he frames my face with his hands I know my eyes are giving everything away.

"A stupid rule?" he echoes, green eyes bouncing back and forth between my own, a gentle smile on his face.

I nod. "The stupidest."

"How about saying 'I more-than-like you'?" he suggests, the gentle smile growing playful.

"A little wordy," I reply, as if I'm entirely unaffected by this line of discussion and its implication.

"Hmm. Ever the writer. What about 'I find you more than tolerable'?"

"A gross understatement, I'd hope."

He nods in mock seriousness. "Bella, my 'junk' and I are not entirely unaffected by you."

"Edward, that might be the sweetest, most lukewarm, perverted sentiment I've ever received."

He laughs, before those eyes I'm coming to adore grow serious. "Is it too soon?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not to me."

"Me either."

"Good." He pauses, brows pulled together and lips pursed. "Except now that I've talked about it so much I feel exposed."

"More exposed than when I wrote about your 'junk' in the student newspaper before I'd even met you?"

"Yes," he admits, entirely unwilling to let me deflect with humor. "More exposed than even then."

I smile up at him, reaching up to cup his jaw in my palm. "I love you, Edward."

His eyes widen and he beams, even as the playfulness returns. "Hey! You just stole my thunder!"

"You were wavering," I say off-handedly, trying unsuccessfully to shrug with 170 pounds of boy on top of me.

"With the words maybe," he says, dropping a kiss to my mouth. "But most certainly not with the sentiment."

"Glad to hear it," I say, kissing the slight cleft of his chin.

"I love you," he breathes into my ear, hitching his hips and his not-entirely-soft length against me. "Bella, I'm so in love with you."

"Good edit," I whisper as he moves over me again.

* * *

**January 2012**

_Bella Swan: Twice in one week? Who are you and what have you done with the technologically challenged Edward Cullen I remember?_

_Edward Cullen: I know. I'm not really on here much._

_Bella Swan: I made the mistake of installing the Facebook app on my phone, so I'm on it far more than is probably healthy. _

_Edward Cullen: Yeah, I don't have a phone with that kind of capability._

_Bella Swan: You still have a flip-phone, don't you?_

_Edward Cullen: Guilty as charged._

I laugh into the empty room, and try to determine where to go from here. I stare at my blinking cursor until the text appears that tells me Edward's typing again.

_Edward Cullen: Can I call you sometime?_

_Bella Swan: Of course you can call me, Edward. We're still friends._

_Edward Cullen: Can I have your number?_

A beat after I type the digits and send them, my phone rings. I grin when an unknown number appears on the screen.

"Hello?"

"I realize this probably sounds trite and clichéd, but I think about you all the time," the familiar voice says without preamble, and I have no idea if it's the voice or the words that send my heart soaring in my chest.

"You know, trite and clichéd actually mean roughly the same thing."

His chuckle is a low rumble in my ear, and warmth spreads through me at the sound. "I should know better than to attempt to be descriptive with a wordsmith."

"Do so at your own peril."

"Seriously though."

"I think about you, too," I admit, tracing a groove in the wooden tabletop with my thumb.

"I tried to call you on your birthday," he says. "Your number was disconnected."

"Oh. Yeah, I, um, had a bit of a complicated situation and I had to change it."

He chuckles. "Some unwelcome stalker?"

"Sadly, something like that," I say, rising from the table and switching off the kitchen light.

"What?" All playfulness is gone from his voice.

"I went on a few dates with this guy, and he became sort of very attached way too fast and it freaked me out, and subsequently he started harassing me with texts and phone calls and stuff, so I changed my number."

"Bella," he breathes.

"Seriously, not a big deal," I say as I step into my bedroom. "I haven't heard anything from him since, and he never knew where I lived or anything, so he couldn't just show up at my apartment. Guess he got the message."

Edward is silent, and even with the years and distance between us, I can hear the words he doesn't say. His silence and the topic of conversation provide a perfect segue into the question that plagues me every time I see the most recent photo on his Facebook page, so I jump at the chance. "What about you?"

"Pardon?"

"I said, 'what about you?'"

"Meaning, am I stalking any ladies out here in California?"

"Meaning, are you _dating_ any ladies out there in California?" I try to keep my voice open and friendly, and I pray that the 3,000 miles and four years between us are enough buffer to disguise the hint of jealousy in my words.

"Not really," he says, his voice non-committal. "Casually, I guess, but no one serious. You? Anyone special and non-stalkerish?"

"Not really," I echo. "I thought maybe the girl on your Facebook page was your girlfriend."

"What girl?"

I shrug, even though he can't see me. "The blonde girl who tagged the photo of you a little while back."

There is a pause, and I wonder if he's hedging on his answer, or if he's trying to remember the photo I'm talking about. "Oh," he says after a moment, and it sounds like it was the latter. "Kelly. She's a fellow med student."

"Oh," I reply, desperately wanting to ask if she's a fellow student he's dating.

"We went out a few times," he says, apparently still knowing me better than I wish he did. "But nothing… serious." When I say nothing in response, he changes the subject. "So you're still in D.C.," he says, and I can hear the muffled sounds of dishes in the background.

"I am," I reply. "Are you in a restaurant?"

"What?"

"I hear silverware or something."

"Oh. No. I'm stacking the dishwasher. My roommates are pigs."

"Worse than Emmett and Jasper?" I ask dubiously. While Edward's room was always unfailingly tidy, the living areas and his roommates' bedrooms were disastrous when they hadn't been tidied in preparation for parties.

"Light years worse," he says. "Man, I miss those two slobs."

I laugh. "Me too."

"I saw a photo of you from Rosalie and Emmett's wedding," he says after a beat. "You looked beautiful."

I smile at nothing as I prop the phone between my chin and my shoulder. "It was a nice dress," I reply as I pull down the covers of my bed.

"I didn't notice the dress," he says, and his voice is soft and gravelly. I remember that tone, waking up to his sleep-roughened voice in my ear, and my stomach twists.

"You were missed," I say in an attempt to redirect and, thankfully, he lets me.

"I wish I could have been there," he says with a sigh. "I sincerely hope I like being a doctor, otherwise I'm going to wind up very bitter about how I've spent the past four years of my life."

I chuckle. "Forfeiting a social life is quite the sacrifice for a twenty-something," I agree as I slide in between my sheets.

"The sacrifices have been considerable," he says, and though his words are innocuous enough, his tone is something else entirely.

* * *

**May 2008**

"Keep or toss?"

I glance over my shoulder to see Edward holding a ratty blanket that has spent the past three years living on the back of my sofa.

"Keep," I say, and he frowns.

"Bella, I thought we were supposed to be downsizing your stuff. You realize you haven't actually thrown anything away yet."

I shrug and opt not to remind him that the blanket he's holding, threadbare and ugly though it may be, is the one beneath which he's held me on too many occasions to count, watching movies and cuddling or groping and engaging in various acts of foreplay. "Keep," I repeat, and he sighs but folds the blanket in question carefully, placing it in the cardboard box beside the sofa.

When Edward offered to help me begin the considerable process of packing up my house, I don't think he had any idea what he was getting himself into. Angela and my lease is up at the end of May, and though my fellowship in D.C. doesn't begin until the start of August, I promised Charlie that I'd spend some time in Forks after graduation. I'm heading to the West Coast the first week of June and staying through July 4th weekend, after which I'll move to the East Coast and use the few weeks to get settled in Washington before my fellowship starts. Conversely, Edward is spending some time with his family in the Chicago suburbs until he relocates to California mid-July. We are literally spending the summer traversing the country in opposite directions, and not a day goes by that I don't feel a little bitter about not having an entire summer with him before we're forced to part ways.

The chirp of Edward's cell phone breaks the silence, and he fishes it out of his pocket. "Hey, Jasper." He holds up a set of four coasters with different Irish beer labels on them, and I hitch my thumb in the universal gesture for "out." He nods in approval and sets them in an otherwise empty cardboard box marked "donate." "Yeah, I think we are." He tilts the mouthpiece away from his lips and arches his brows in my direction. "Still up for going out tonight?"

I shrug. "Sure." While I've never been what could be termed a social butterfly, the looming end of my college career has made me more willing to go out with friends. And, if I'm being honest, the handsy affections of slightly-inebriated Edward are another good motivator. While affectionate when sober, Edward's true hornball comes out when he's been drinking, and it's a side of him I find endlessly endearing and entirely arousing.

"Yep, we're in," he says into his phone, and I return to boxing up my DVD collection while he makes plans with Jasper.

Almost an hour later, following a shower for me and a blow job for Edward as a reward for his help, we're sitting in a booth at Finnegan's Slake, a small Irish pub near the Northwestern campus. I'm still feeling stirred up from fooling around before we left the house, and I am regretting turning down Edward's offers to reciprocate given our time limit. He rubs my knee knowingly beneath the sticky table. "Don't worry," he murmurs lowly into my ear. "You know I'll take care of you as soon as we get home." A shudder works its way through my body. "Maybe even the minute we get home," he says, his warm breath puffing on the skin of my neck as his nose brushes my earlobe. "Maybe even against the front door."

I think I whimper, and Jasper groans. "Come on, you guys. Come up for air, at least."

"We're here, aren't we?" Edward counters, and although he straightens, his hand remains on my leg. "This is us, coming up for air."

Jasper rolls his eyes, but his mouth is smiling. "Yeah, yeah. I'm empty. Who wants another?" He makes a move to rise but I hold up a hand.

"My turn," I say, grabbing his empty glass and Edward's fingers tighten around my thigh.

"Bella," he says, but I shake my head.

"Not having this argument again," I say lightly, smiling at him to belie the reprimand in my words. "I'm capable of buying a round." I lean in and peck him on the lips. "But your chivalry does not go unnoticed and will be rewarded later."

He beams and Jasper makes a mock gagging noise. Once they give me their drink orders, I make my way to the bar with three empty glasses in hand. Placing them on the wooden bar, I look up to see the bartender standing before me and I smile in surprise, grateful I won't have to spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get his attention.

"What can I get you, darlin'?"

I smile at the endearment. Jasper's always calling people darlin', and while there was a time I might have found it off-putting, it's now oddly charming. "A Guinness and two Newcastles, please."

He arches a brow. "Which one's yours?"

"Guinness," I say, resting my elbows on the bar after checking to make sure it's not sporting any beer spills.

"Girl after my own heart," he says with a wink, pulling on the Guinness tap. "No fruity drinks for you?"

"I like stout," I reply with a shrug, and he places my beer in front of me.

"You a student?" He pulls on the Newcastle tap and fills a second glass.

I nod. "Not for long now, though. I graduate next week."

"Congratulations," he says, holding out a fist. After a beat of hesitation, I pound it, feeling exceedingly awkward as I do so. I'm not really the fist-pounding type of girl. "That your boyfriend over there?" he asks, filling the third glass.

I glance over my shoulder to see Edward watching us carefully, an unreadable expression on his face. "Yeah," I say, turning back to the bartender and handing him the twenty in my palm.

"Smart guy, to date a Guinness girl," he says with a wink and turns to the register to make change.

"Keep it," I tell him, collecting the three glasses carefully. I've never mastered the art of carrying multiple drinks, and dropping one on the floor of a bar in a sea of people is essentially one of my worst nightmares.

Once I'm safely back at the table, I slide the two glasses of Newcastle to the boys, and Jasper thanks me as Edward wraps his hand around the glass. I lower myself to the bench seat beside him and take a sip of my own beer. "Do you know him?" Edward asks, tilting his chin toward the bar before returning his gaze to the full glass before him.

"The bartender?" I ask.

"The bartender."

I shrug. "No. Why?"

"He seemed awfully friendly."

"He was," I say, and it isn't until Edward looks up at me that I recognize his tone for what it is: jealous. "He was impressed I drink Guinness." Edward hums noncommittally and Jasper watches us in silence; when I glance at him, his eyes are confused but wary. "Edward?" I say, placing a hand on his forearm, and he shakes his head.

"It's fine. Thanks for the beer. Cheers." He holds up his glass and takes a deep pull, and Jasper mercifully changes the subject.

For the rest of the evening, Edward is reserved and quiet. His hand doesn't return to my leg, even when I press the length of my thigh against his, and when Jasper strikes up a conversation with a girl at the bar, our own talk is stilted and uncomfortable for the first time since we met. Finally I sigh. "Do you want to go home?"

I'm expecting a denial, an argument, but all I get is a small nod. "Yeah. I'm kind of beat. Do you mind if we call it a night?"

I shake my head, and when we tell Jasper we're leaving, he just nods and gives me a knowing look. We make our way back to my house in silence, and while I'm comforted by Edward's warm hand in mine, the lack of conversation is completely freaking me out. Edward and I never want for conversation; in fact, our verbal sparring is probably my favorite thing about our relationship, with the obvious exception of everything about the way his naked body touches mine.

By the time we're in my bed, me wearing pajamas and him stripped to his boxers with what feels like a mile of space between us, I'm out of patience.

"Okay, what the hell?"

"I'm sorry," he says immediately, staring at the ceiling. "I acted like a jealous ass, and I'm really sorry that I couldn't shake it off. I ruined our night."

His obvious self-reproach takes the wind out of the sails of my indignation. "Edward, it's okay. I just don't understand. You've never been the jealous type before. Where did that come from?" He closes his eyes and I ghost a hand over his arm. "Hey. Talk to me."

"Because that's what comes next, isn't it?" His words would be cutting, if not for the gentle tone in which they are delivered. "That's where we're headed. You'll be going out to bars in D.C., and guys will be hitting on you and flirting with you and taking you home. I'll be out in California with my nose buried in books and elbow-deep in cadavers and missing you. That's where this is headed."

"Edward," I whisper around the ball of tears and regret at the back of my throat. I want to argue with him, but he's right. That's exactly where we're headed. We're headed for goodbye. "You'll probably be surrounded by hot nurses looking to try out their doctor fantasies on virile young med students. Don't you watch 'Grey's Anatomy'?"

He shakes his head and the joke falls flat. "This just…" He rubs a hand over his face and blows out a breath. "This just sucks so, so hard."

"Yeah," I agree sadly, once again running a soothing hand over his skin. "It really does."

With a sigh, he rolls onto his side to face me; I mirror his posture and stare at his beautiful face through the darkness as he holds a hand up between us, palm out. I press my palm to his and he intertwines our fingers before resting our joined hands on the bed in the barely-there distance between our hearts. He presses a light kiss to my mouth before pulling away and resting his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. "I just love you so much and I can't believe I don't get to keep you."

I have no defense against the tears that sting my eyes and my throat, but I refuse to turn into a sobbing, miserable mess. This is hard enough already. "Me either."

* * *

**February 2012**

"Did you know that Brian Wilson wrote the music for 'California Girls' when he was tripping on acid?"

One of my favorite things about my recently-rediscovered friendship with Edward is his tendency to begin phone calls as if we're already mid-conversation. "Are you talking about the Beach Boys song?" I ask, juggling my purse, door keys, and three full-to-bursting reusable shopping bags.

"Yes," he says. "Which another way of saying that I'm pretty sure that this entire state is experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs."

"Okay, I give up. What the hell are we talking about?"

"I don't think I belong on the West Coast," he laments, then pauses. "Why are you out of breath?"

"What?" I ask, finally getting the door open and dumping the grocery bags and my purse on the floor inside the entryway.

"You sound breathless," he says. "Am I interrupting something?"

The teasing is evident in his voice, and I can't resist the bait. "Actually, I was just banging my landlord; can I call you back later?"

"I hope he's giving you a break on rent," he replies without missing a beat, and I laugh as he continues. "Though he can't be very good; I don't recall you ever answering the phone when you were in bed with _me._"

"That you were aware of. Honestly, Edward, sometimes you were rather caught up in the moment."

"Ouch. I realize I started us down this conversational path, but can we change the subject? I'm not sure my ego can take the beating."

"Please."

"Question remains: have I interrupted something? Because you really do sound like I pulled you from somewhere."

"Oh, no. I just got home and you caught me as I was trying to get inside with an armful of groceries." I'm instantly reminded of our first phone conversation, during which I was wrestling with another front door.

"Oh. Okay. Well, anyway. How are you?"

"Good, thanks. Watson, inside, buddy. How are you?"

"Good." He pauses. "Watson?"

"My dog."

"You named your dog Watson?"

"Um, Watson was the most kick-ass sidekick ever."

"I don't know about that… Horatio?"

"I'm not nearly pretentious enough to name my dog after a Shakespeare character."

"Fair enough. What about Sancho Panza?"

"My dog is smarter than that. You'll admit old Sancho wasn't exactly the sharpest sword in the armory."

"True. I suppose Watson is acceptable."

"Well thanks, Edward; your approval means a lot to me."

He laughs. "You bet. So, no big date tonight?"

I frown into the middle distance, thrown by the abrupt and rather blunt question. "What?"

Edward mock-gasps. "Bella Swan, don't tell me you don't know what today is."

I'm racking my brain when I suddenly recall the red cardboard cutout hearts stuck to the register at the grocery store and the small display of boxed chocolates. "Valentine's Day," I say with a groan, and Edward laughs.

"Indeed. The holiday guaranteed to turn otherwise sane women into lunatics and to result in fifty percent of the male population shacking up with Fido for the night."

"Lame," I agree. "Nope. Dinner for one at Casa Swan. What about you? Flying solo as well?"

"It's only four in the afternoon on the West Coast," he reminds me. "Hardly dinner time."

I don't know how to answer him, so I busy myself putting groceries away as I debate whether to change the subject. After a breath he chuckles. "No date." There is a loosening in my chest as I shelve cans of tomato puree.

"No opportunity to serenade a lovely lady with 'California Girls'?"

"Nope. The only female company I'll be enjoying tonight is the anatomy diagrams in my veritable library of textbooks."

"You were the kid who whacked off to his health book in junior high, weren't you?"

"Couldn't that descriptor fit pretty much every American male?"

I laugh. "Probably."

"Though I swear that I've since graduated from textbooks as spank bank fodder," he says with false solemnity. "My pornographic materials are much more high-brow these days."

As I move to put a new carton of milk into the door of my fridge, I'm struck by the image of Edward's hand wrapped around himself, and the half-gallon slips from my hand. "Shit," I mutter, picking it up and saying a silent prayer of thanks that it didn't split and leak all over the floor.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, I, uh, dropped the milk."

"Oh," he says, before his voice goes back to playful. "Something got you flustered, Bella Swan?"

"Not really, your words just brought back to mind what I did in my own bed last night. Naked. On top of the sheets."

"Wow," he breathes after a moment, and the thickness in his voice sounds a lot like arousal. "Nicely played."

I laugh, but as a familiar rush warms my body I frown at the groceries I have yet to store. "Okay, what are we doing?"

"I don't know," he says, not even feigning confusion. We stay silent for a few beats before I hear him sigh. "Listen, Bella, I wasn't going to say anything because it would have been out of the blue and random, but since we've been talking I feel like it's relevant." He pauses and I'm as still as a stone statue, a can of dog food gripped in my white-knuckled hand. "I'm a candidate for a residency position at Johns Hopkins next year."

"What?" I say stupidly, even as my mind begins to tick over like a Rolodex.

_Johns Hopkins. In Baltimore._

"I interviewed in December to do my internship and residency in the pediatrics program at Johns Hopkins," he replies, and I can hear uncertainty in his voice. "I've applied and interviewed a few other places too, but I ranked Johns Hopkins as my first choice."

"Where else did you interview?" I ask.

"Children's Memorial, UCSF, UCLA, and Boston Children's," he says and my mind is still flipping.

_Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston._

_And Baltimore._

"Wow," I say, unable to come up with anything more brilliant. "That's…diverse."

A low rumble of a chuckle comes through my earpiece. "Yes," he says.

"And Hopkins was your first choice?"

"Yes," he says again. "You rank your options and then the programs that conducted interviews rank the candidates, and a national database matches up students with programs for the optimal combination of matches."

I try to picture my future being at the hands of a random computer lottery and find that I can't. "How did you rank the others?"

"Hopkins, Children's Memorial, Boston Children's, UCSF, and then UCLA," he says, and it doesn't escape my notice that Chicago is his second choice.

"Why Hopkins?" I ask, struggling for nonchalance.

"It's the best," he says haltingly, and we are silent for a beat as I digest the information and struggle with its implications. "I can hear your mind working," he says softly, and the familiar expression makes my throat ache. As if he can tell, he sighs. "Bella, there's a very specific conversation I want to have with you about the potential that I could be living in Baltimore come August, but I don't know how you feel about that, and frankly I don't know where to start."

"Me either," I admit, though I want to tell him we can start with the way my heart is pounding in my chest and blood is roaring in my ears. I want to tell him to begin right at the point where pinpricks of sweat are dotting the small of my back, but it's been four years since I was that honest with him and I'm out of practice.

"Is that a conversation you'd be willing to have?" he asks.

The answer is instant, but the implications less so. "Yes," I say after a moment. "But not until it's a yes or a no."

"What?"

"I don't want to have that conversation until you know for sure whether or not you're going to be here," I clarify. "I don't want to—"

_Get my hopes up._

_Get my heart broken._

"I know," he says when I trail off. "Okay. So we'll table this until I know for sure."

"Okay. When will that be?" I ask, desperate not to live in endless limbo.

"The third Friday in March," he replies. "Match Day."

_Match Day,_ I think. _How appropriate. Or not._

Three weeks. In three weeks I'll… Well, I don't know. Maybe I'll be more than fine.

* * *

**May 2008**

"So how are we going to do this?" I say into the darkness, rubbing my foot against his ankles beneath the covers of his bed. I can just make out the ominous outlines of cardboard boxes around the perimeter of his bedroom in the soft blue moonlight filtering through his windows.

My head bobs where it rests on his chest as he heaves a sigh, and his fingers rake lightly over the arm I have wrapped around his torso. "We'll talk," he says softly. "We'll stay in touch." He pauses in his words and movements before he speaks again, his voice thick. "We'll be friends."

"Okay," I say, even though it doesn't sound like nearly enough. It seems absurd that we can go from this, lying lovingly wrapped around each other in the dark, to occasional phone calls from opposite sides of the country. "Edward, tomorrow…don't tell me you love me."

His hand curls around my shoulder. "What?"

"Don't say it," I reply, wrapping my top leg around his left one. "Because if you say it, I'm not going to be able to get on the plane. So just…don't say it tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," he says softly. "I do, though."

"I know. Me too."

And then he rolls us over and shows me _and_ tells me, using body and words to burn the sentiment into me.

"I'll read every single thing you write," he says the next morning, standing curbside at Chicago Midway with his hands buried in the pockets of his jeans, his green eyes suspiciously bright. He's wearing the threadbare swimming t-shirt he wore the day I met him in the Dean of Students' office, a small hole at the hem of the neckline, and I realize as I stare at it that I'm cataloguing details to take with me.

"I'll call you whenever I catch a cold," I reply lightly, swallowing valiantly against the sting in my throat.

He nods before leaning in and pressing his lips to my forehead. "I more-than-like you, Bella," he breathes, his lips still against my skin.

"My lady-bits and I are not entirely unaffected by you," I reply, grateful beyond measure when he laughs.

"Okay. You should go. Don't want to miss your flight."

"I kind of do, actually," I say, even as I bend to hoist my backpack over my shoulder.

"Do me a favor," he says, handing me my boarding pass.

"Name it."

"Don't write stories about other guys' junk, okay?" His voice is light, teasing, but his eyes are serious.

"I think that was a once-in-a-lifetime article for me," I say, and he smiles.

"Call me when you land."

"I will."

We stand in silence for a breath before he nods and steps back, increasing the distance between us. "Safe travels," he says roughly, and I nod before turning and walking through the sliding glass doors of the airport. I don't want him to see the tears tracking silently down my face, so I don't look back.

* * *

**March 2012**

"I got my placement," he says carefully, and suddenly there's no air in the room. I perch on the lip of my desk chair and hunch over the mouthpiece of my phone, as if I'm a child with a secret.

"And?"

I hear him blow out a breath on the other end of the phone, on the other side of the country, and in an opposite and equal reaction, I inhale and hold my breath.

"I didn't get Hopkins," he says softly, and my heart stutters.

"You didn't," I say, determined to keep my voice even.

"No." I wish I could see his face right now.

"Where _did_ you get?"

"Children's Memorial," he says carefully. _Chicago_.

"You're going home," I say finally, forcing something that could be cheer into my voice.

"Yes," he says simply. In this moment I share his distaste for technology in general and computers in particular.

"Oh." For once, I have no words.

"Yeah."

"Your family will be really glad, Edward," I say, thinking of Esme and Carlisle and Alice, now a sophomore at Northwestern. This is the silver lining, and maybe if I focus on it with enough concentration, the rest won't hurt quite so badly.

"Yeah," he says again.

"And hey, your second choice is pretty good, right? I mean I bet a bunch of people got stuck with, like, their fifth choices or something."

"Probably," he agrees, but the tone of his voice tells me he's not going to let me coax him out of his funk, so I join him in it instead.

"This sucks," I say finally, and I hear another exhale on his end.

"God, it so does," he breathes. "I really thought…" He trails off, and I'm glad he doesn't put voice to thought. Because I really thought, too. Against my better judgment I'd begun imagining him here – in my apartment, in my car, in my bed, in my _life_ – and the realization that it won't come to pass is nearly as difficult as it was to let him go the first time around. Suddenly, in this moment, I need to be off the phone.

"Edward, I have to go."

"Oh," he says, and nearly as much as I need to escape, I want to reach through the phone lines and wrap my arms around his neck. "Okay."

"Sorry, I just…"

"No, it's okay. I understand. Can I call you later?"

"I, um… I have dinner plans with Jessica."

"Okay," he says again, and I have a sudden flashback to other conversations with 3,000 miles separating us and forced good cheer slowly giving way to awkwardness and, ultimately, silence.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I promise, and as we say goodbye, it's the first time in four years that it feels final.

. . .

"Edward _Cullen_?" Jessica exclaims after I have filled her in on the drama over dinner at the restaurant where her boyfriend is the head chef.

"I know."

"Wow. When did that happen?"

"Shortly after the press association award," I say, and I don't have it in me to feel guilty for not telling my friend about the admittedly dramatic recent events in my sorry excuse for a love life.

"Wow," she says again. Though Jessica and I weren't overly close in college, our joint exodus to D.C. brought us much closer, and she now rivals Angela for the position of person-to-whom-I-tell-everything.

"Yeah. I just… I'm feeling stupid," I admit finally, and it's fifty percent true. The other fifty percent is just really, really sad.

"Why?" Though she may be out of the game, Jessica's journalism skills are still impeccable: we've already hit three of the five W's. Four, if we count the D.C./California/Chicago triangle as the "where" of it all.

"Because I'm exactly where I was four years ago," I say. "I just… Talking to him again, I just realize how much I've missed him and how much I really, really wanted him to be here. And I can remember with perfect clarity how I felt four years ago when we were breaking up, and it felt _just like this_. Which is stupid, because he hasn't been mine since then." Wondering if he's been someone else's is acid in an open gash, and I hold the thought at bay.

"Maybe not technically," Jessica says, and I delay my response when the waiter appears to ask how we're enjoying our entrees.

Once he has disappeared again, I take a careful bite of my fish before continuing. "What does that mean?"

"If you hadn't been headed for D.C. and he hadn't been headed for Stanford, what do you think would have happened?"

I consider the question, a question I never really let myself pick apart before because it was simply too painful. Now, though, it's like an old scab and I'm wondering if I pick it off whether it will bleed anew or simply float to the ground leaving pink, healing new skin in its place. "I don't know," I say finally.

"Maybe that's as difficult as any other part of it," she says simply, waving her fork to emphasize her point. "Maybe it would have worked out and you guys would have ended up married with a couple of kids, or maybe it would have fizzled and you'd have both moved on. The point is, you don't know. And the not knowing is driving you nuts." She takes a bite of her dinner and watches me process her words as she chews.

There are good and bad things to having a friend who sometimes knows you better than you know yourself. One of the undeniably good things is that she can see the realities from which you shield yourself. She's right; maybe I would have learned six months after the fact that Edward Cullen left post-shave whiskers all over the sink or couldn't handle losing at board games or some other combination of factors that guided me slowly to the realization that he wasn't the guy for me. On the flip side, however, the idea that I may have lost the man who was perfect for me simply because of geography and crappy timing is heartbreakingly sad. I spent years hiding how sad it made me because it felt like the adult thing to do. We made the logical choice, and a four-year long-distance thing wasn't feasible, and wasn't it a shame? And yet part of me that I've kept under wraps for four years wanted to scream and cry and rail about the unfairness of it all like a fifteen-year-old with her first broken heart.

When I've been silent for too long, she sighs and places her fork down beside her half-eaten grouper. "Okay," she says slowly, studying me. I remember this look from the few occasions when we worked together on interviews: she's about to say something she expects me to fight. "I'm going to ask you a question that would make all of our feminist role models scream in protest, but here it is. Have you thought about going back to Chicago?"

I pause at her words. No. I haven't. Not even once. "No," I admit, staring down at my own dinner, a picture-worthy filet of salmon of which I've eaten half and tasted none.

"I'm not suggesting you drop everything and follow a guy halfway across the country. Or meet him halfway, as it were. But you recently said you felt like you were maxing out your potential in your current gig and you just won a pretty major award, so if you were even remotely considering a change of employment, it might be prudent to strike while the iron's hot." She pauses before continuing. "And I might not be telling you this except that I've decided to stay in publishing, so there's an online news editor job with your name on it based in Chicago."

My eyes fly to hers and I frown. "What?"

She shrugs, but I can see the self-satisfied smirk pulling at her mouth. "A few months ago I was chatting with Angela about maybe getting back into the journalism world, and she mentioned that she's partnering up with someone from the magazine to start a political blog. Sort of like Politico but focused solely on Chicago politics. She says the timing's perfect: the Democrats in the city are still creaming themselves over the fact that their mayor is the president's former chief of staff, and in the post-Blagojevich world of Chicago government everyone's just waiting for the next major corruption charge." She shrugs casually. "She asked if I might be interested in tag-teaming the news editor spot with someone, since I'm a little rusty. But Bella, that's a gig you could do all by yourself, and probably in your sleep."

"Jess, I can't—"

"Can't what? Take a chance on something being more than 'fine'?"

"You hate your job," I argue feebly. "And your boss."

"He's going to retire or die one day – sooner rather than later, if I ever get around to dumping arsenic in his coffee – and eventually they're going to promote me. I'm paying my dues. I may hate my job, but I love my work. My heart's in books now, not news, and if I turn tail and run, I'm giving up on that. I don't want to give up on what I really want."

I'm not sure whether her words are intentiona,l or if I'm just making everything about Edward, but suddenly I want to throw myself at her and kiss her face. "Me either," I say softly.

Later that evening, when I'm no longer able to pretend I'm not entertaining the idea of Jessica's bombshell suggestion, I call Angela. Following the required small-talk and catch-up, I fill her in on my recent reconnection with Edward; her reaction is unsurprisingly similar to Jessica's.

"Wow, really? Edward Cullen?"

"I know," I say, folding a hand towel from the still-warm pile of clean laundry that I've dragged from the dryer to my sofa.

"When did that happen?"

"Shortly after the press association award," I say, even as I laugh at the fact that she, too, is hitting the W's.

"Wow," she says again.

"Yeah. And I feel like a tool for bringing it up this way, but Jessica mentioned something tonight that has me thinking stupid things."

"What kinds of stupid things?"

"Moving-back-to-Chicago stupid things," I say, flinging my arm out in embarrassed discomfort and knocking the pile of just-folded laundry off the armrest of the couch and onto the floor. "Shit."

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Back to Chicago?" Angela prods, and I glare at the fitted bed sheet that despite four years as a so-called adult I _still _don't know how to fold.

"Yeah. She told me about the political blog you're starting up."

"Oh, that," Angela says, and something in her voice brings me up short.

"She, um, mentioned that you were looking for a news editor, but that she's going to say in publishing."

I hear my friend sigh. "Our funding fell through."

"Oh," I say stupidly.

"Yeah, we thought we had a grant that didn't come to pass. But shit, Bella, I'd have hired you in a heartbeat, are you kidding me? I would love to have you back in Chicago."

"Yeah," I say. I'd love to have me back in Chicago too, and while it wasn't something I was even considering mere hours ago, it's suddenly something that I feel like I wanted desperately and don't get to have. How very fitting.

"I can see if there's anything else open in the city, though," she offers. "Reach out to my contacts."

"Thanks," I say, suddenly exhausted by what feels like too many stop-starts in one day. "I'll let you know."

A short time later, as I'm showering away the day, I allow myself to pretend that the water slipping over my cheeks is from the spigot overhead.

* * *

**February 2009**

I give myself a critical once-over in the bathroom mirror, the harsh fluorescent lighting doing little to hide my smudged mascara and washed-out skin. I look like death warmed over; I don't look like what I am, which is a woman who was just pretty decently screwed by a cute public policy graduate student from Georgetown. After a nice dinner, a nice date, we came back to my apartment and had nice sex.

_Nice sex._

God, really? Granted, I acknowledge that the likelihood that I would leap from having regularly mind-blowing sex with a guy I was head-over-heels in love with to having a similarly satisfying rendezvous with a virtual stranger was unlikely, but one would think I'd be able to conjure up a better adjective than _nice._

Perhaps my first post-Edward shebang – ha – was always destined to be lukewarm. Maybe this was simply the sorbet to cleanse my sexual palate, and next time I'll be back in the game and ready for epic sex. Before I can stop myself, I wonder if Edward has ventured into the world of dating yet, if there's some female medical student who knows what he's packing in his scrub pants, and the possibility makes me feel even worse.

"Bella?" The soft rap on the bathroom door yanks me from my morbid thought process, and I smooth my hair and run my thumbs beneath my eyes before I open the door. "Sorry," he says sheepishly, running a hand through his short sandy hair. "I, uh, just needed to use the restroom."

"Of course," I say, slipping around him. "Have at it."

If he notices the wide berth I give him, he says nothing, disappearing into my bathroom and closing the door. Back in my room I slip into an old Northwestern t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts and falter between my closet and my bed. The thought of waking up next to someone in the morning fills me with more dread than is probably reasonable, given that this side of twenty minutes ago I was lying beneath him. I know that if I climb between the sheets, the invitation is there. Conversely, if I'm clothed and _not _in bed, there is an unspoken implication that the intimacy is over. I'm debating how rude I'm willing to be when the bathroom door opens and I notice that my date is wearing his boxers and has his pants dangling from one hand. He glances at my attire before looking away quickly, scanning the room for his shirt. "I, uh, had a great time," he says, and I feel suddenly guilty as I look at him standing in the middle of my bedroom, awkwardly holding his pants and seemingly at a loss.

"Me too," I say, grateful that I'm at least partially telling the truth.

He scratches his ear. "I have an early meeting tomorrow," he says finally, and I nod with what might be a tad too much enthusiasm.

"Oh. Yeah. Me too."

"So. I'll call you?"

"Definitely."

When I don't hear from him again, I don't feel nearly as badly as I probably should. A week later is the first time I let myself look at Edward's Facebook page.

* * *

**April 2012**

I drop my keys on the table inside the doorway to my apartment and kick my heels off before spinning to lock my front door behind me. Shrugging out of my coat, I drop a quick scratch on the top of Watson's head. "Hey, buddy." His tongue lolls as he gazes up at me with beseeching eyes. "I know, I know, you're probably hungry. Come on." The quiet click of his claws on the hardwood floor is a welcome complement to the soft pad of my stocking feet, and I'm silently grateful not for the first time that I adopted him. As people always say, there's a significant difference between alone and lonely, and I have long suspected that Watson's the reason I've thus far avoided sliding down that slope from one to the other.

In the two weeks that have passed since Edward learned he wouldn't be moving to the East Coast, our phone conversations have lost much of their former lightheartedness and have nosedived rather spectacularly into disappointed and awkward. A part of me feels silly for hoping and pathetic for allowing myself to regress to a similar place I was in four years ago even as another part of my brain tries to adorn the new reality with other possibilities.

Chicago isn't nearly as far from D.C. as California. Maybe. _Maybe._

Then I think about the schedule of a hospital intern, the necessity of my continued presence in D.C., and inwardly roll my eyes at my ill-advised optimism. I can't quite believe I'm here again. Feeling this again. Wanting him again.

_Again. As if I ever stopped._

Part of me wants to be angry with Edward for opening this can without clueing me in; he admitted that he knew when he started talking to me that this was a possibility, and at least half of my heart wishes he'd waited to contact me until Hopkins was a sure thing.

_And yet._

Four years of distance, four years of relative silence, and before I even heard a word about Hopkins, a comment on a Facebook photo was enough to send my heart soaring, enough to make me more excited about anything non-work related than I'd been in four years.

Trying to determine what that means and how I could make it into something tangible again is just about enough to give me a stress headache.

As I pour kibble into Watson's metal bowl, I force my mind to shift from Edward to the cocktail hour from which I'd just returned. To the handsome if slightly dull man who finally coaxed my phone number out of me, and whose call I have no intention of answering if it comes. I wonder idly if the ending of this brief chapter with Edward will turn out to be the closing of the book, if I will finally be able to shut the door on that possibility and move forward without the ghost of regret holding me back. After all, I've been able to avoid his Facebook page since he broke the news of his placement, and that's something I'd been powerless to do since the first time I slept with someone who wasn't him.

Still, when I noticed in the dim lighting of the bar that the digit-seeker's eyes were a hazel-tinted green, my mind was suddenly elsewhere and those eyes were suddenly a deeper green framed by longer lashes. And just as suddenly, I was struck by a sickening possibility: what if I never closed this chapter, and the ghost of Edward Cullen was destined to loom in my awareness? What if "fine" is the closest I ever get to the blissfully wonderful I had when I was twenty-two?

The possibility is nearly enough to bring me to tears.

. . .

When I get out of my afternoon staff meeting a week later and check my voicemail, there is a message from Edward. Dropping my pen and notebook onto my desk and sinking into my desk chair, I press play.

"Hey, Bella. It's Edward. Could you please call me back when you get this? I need to talk to you. Thanks." His voice sounds surprisingly animated; when I dial his number, twirling a pen between my fingers as it rings, I try to steel myself to hear his voice.

"I was worried you weren't going to call me back," he says in lieu of hello, and I smile at my computer screen despite the guilt that gnaws at me. There have been a few of his calls that I haven't returned merely out of self-preservation, and this is the first time he's alluded to them. Still, this is the first time in weeks that he's launched right into conversation and bypassed "hello," and the throwback to our easier conversations is nearly enough to lift my mood all by itself.

"Sorry," I say, an insufficient apology for my lack of reciprocity. "I've been a bad friend."

"It's okay," he says smoothly. "I understand. How are you?"

I chew on the cap of my pen for a beat, weighing the temptation of truth against the comfort of a lie. "Okay," I say finally, giving him a little of both. "How are you?"

"Good," he says instantly, and before I can wonder at the new lightness of his voice, he continues. "I was going to give you space, but something changed."

At the words and his tone, my heart skips despite my best efforts to command it otherwise. "What changed?"

I hear a slow breath through the phone line and a faint shuffling, and I am momentarily transported to the first time I heard Edward's voice through a phone speaker and the brief hesitation before he invited me to a keg party. "I need to know how you felt about the possibility of my moving to Baltimore," he says slowly, and I frown at my own indistinct reflection in the darkened computer monitor.

"I thought I was pretty clear on that before," I say carefully, utterly confused by the direction this conversation is taking and the sudden disappearance of the lightness.

"You wanted me there," he says, his voice still hesitant.

"Yes," I reply. "I want you here."

He doesn't acknowledge the change in verb tense, and after a brief moment of silence, I hear him blow out a breath. "Okay. One of the candidates who got placed at Hopkins turned it down, and they offered her spot to me. And I want to take it." He spits the words out in a rush, as if he's a kid trying to justify to his parents why he should be allowed to sleep over at a friend's house.

"You do?"

"I do," he says. "And not just because it's the best."

He's rather obviously putting himself out on a limb, so I decide to join him out there, dropping my pen and leaning back in my chair. "After you told me about your placement, I was, uh, thinking about moving back to Chicago."

"Really?" Surprise and flattery are clear in his voice.

"Really. And I realize how stupid and impulsive that is."

"I love how stupid and impulsive that is." Silence falls between us, and I listen to him breathe. "Bella, I have a long weekend for Easter in two weeks. Can I come see you?"

My heart pounds. "What?"

"I mean, ostensibly I could be coming to see Baltimore and look for an apartment and any other number of relevant things if I'm going to be at Hopkins. But I'm trying to be really honest here, and in this moment, all of those things are secondary to seeing you."

"Yes," I say immediately.

If I didn't know better, I would swear I could hear him smile.

. . .

When I open my door twelve days later to find Edward standing on my doorstep, looking just as heart-stoppingly handsome as I remember, I am wearing a bright yellow fleece bathrobe and tangerine-colored wool socks that nearly reach my knees. His green-gray eyes flicker down my body and back up once before settling on my face, a wry smile pulling at that familiar mouth. "Are you Big Bird?" he asks, cocking his head to one side. A rather auspicious beginning, to be sure.

I give his own person a critical once-over, taking in his rumpled clothing and messy hair and overstuffed duffel bag before mirroring his head-tilt and quirking an eyebrow. "Are you homeless?"

He beams and drops his bag, stepping into my foyer and wrapping his arms around my waist. "God, it's good to see you," he murmurs, and I band my own arms around his shoulders.

"Ditto. I was going to meet you at the airport," I tell him.

"I made an earlier connection out of St. Louis," he says, still not releasing me.

"You simply couldn't wait to compare me to a Muppet?"

"Nope," he says, finally pulling back to look into my face. "I've been stalking your Facebook photos, but you're more beautiful in person. Muppet-like wardrobe notwithstanding."

I feel a telltale flush working its way up my neck, and I attempt to beat it back with honesty. "I've been stalking yours, too." I run my hands over his shoulders. "Do you still swim?"

The non-sequitur throws him and he frowns. "What?" I squeeze his deltoids in clarification and he grins. "Sometimes."

"Do you still wear the Speedo?"

This time, he laughs out loud. "No. I retired my Speedo. It caused far too much commotion among would-be journalists looking for a scoop."

"I'll bet." We are still standing in my doorway smiling stupidly at each other when I hear the click of claws approaching from behind me.

"Ah," Edward says, glancing past my shoulder. "My dear Watson." He releases me and drops to one knee to let my dog sniff his hand before Watson leans in and lets Edward scratch him behind the ears. "Very discriminating guard dog you have here," he says, one eyebrow raised, and I shrug.

"He was a rescue. He's almost nine. I wasn't exactly looking for Cujo."

Edward laughs as he straightens, reclaiming the handles of his bag. "Can I come in?"

I nod, stepping back with a grandiose sweep of my hand in the direction of my humble living space. "I was making coffee."

"Jackpot."

He follows me to my small kitchen and I watch as he surreptitiously glances around the apartment as we pass through it. When we are in my small kitchen, he seats himself at my circular table and watches me resume filling my own mug before pulling a second one down from the cabinet and pouring one for him. "I like your apartment," he says after a moment, and when I turn to him, he is studying the three framed photos I have above my table: Charlie and me pretending to "lean" on the Washington Monument; Angela, Jessica, and me in our caps and gowns after our graduation from Northwestern four years ago; a scenic shot of La Push Beach.

"Thanks," I say, sliding the mug across the table to him. Once I'm seated at the table, I stir a larger-than-healthy splash of cream into my coffee and take a sip, studying him over the rim of my mug. I can see the boy I loved in his face, but the face itself belongs to a man. His hair is shorter, though still unruly, and I can see the very faint beginnings of crinkles at the sides of his eyes when he grins at me over the lip of his own mug. Returning my coffee to the table, I lick my lips. "Did you ever see that movie _Someone Like You_?"

"I don't think so," he says with a small frown. "Should I have?" He returns his own mug to the tabletop, and I make a mental note that he still drinks his coffee black.

"Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman?"

He shakes his head. "Nope. Sorry."

I shrug. "It's no big deal. I just… this just reminded me of a line from that movie."

"Oh yeah? What was the line?"

I force myself to meet his eyes as I recite the words. "'I was just thinking how good my apartment looks with you in it.'"

He beams. "I like that." He takes another sip before setting his mug back down and propping one elbow on the tabletop, cupping the back of his neck. Green-gray eyes pin me, and I swallow before he speaks again. "I've been thinking a lot lately about how good my life looks with you in it."

I am powerless against the smile that breaks free or the blush that floods my face. "I can't believe you're here. This is…well, sort of bizarre."

"I know."

"And you really want Hopkins? Because this is your future, and we both decided four years ago that our futures were important, and—"

"Bella," he cuts me off. "My future is a two-pronged fork. One prong is my education and eventual career, and the other… Well, I'm just now figuring out that the other is you." When I have no response to that, he slides his mug to the side and reaches across the distressed wood of my table to take my hand. "Okay, I need to say something."

"Okay."

"I know it would be really romantic if I said I'd been pining for you for the past four years, but I haven't."

I feel my eyebrows lift. "Wow, you really know how to sweep a girl off her feet," I joke.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I missed you. A lot. But after you suggested we take some time, I was sort of relieved. I mean, how pathetic would it be if the great love story in my life happened when I was twenty-two, and I was powerless to hold on to it? So I moved on. I dated. I tried to find someone else who made me feel the way you did, but no one ever did. And a part of me thought it was just that young love thing everyone talks about, like the intensity was magnified because we were young and carefree, but as soon as I saw you standing in your doorway, I felt happy in a way I haven't in four years. And in the past two months, every word that comes out of your mouth just makes me feel more and more like I did four years ago, and I love the way you cut your hair, and I want to know how you got this little scar on your wrist, and I just want to know everything that happened between then and now. I want to know all the new stuff and talk about all the old stuff and just… be with you. Here. Now."

"I dated, too," I blurt out. "I mean…yeah. Ditto. I wasn't pining for you, either. But I did miss you. And it got worse when we started talking again."

"Yeah," he agrees. "It did."

"I might have Facebook-stalked you a little bit more than I previously implied."

He laughs. "Facebook-stalking you was one of the few reasons I even kept my account after you made me set it up," he replies. I take another sip of my coffee with my free hand, and my heart hitches when I feel him rubbing his thumb over the back of my other hand. "Listen, we can take this as slowly as you want," he says carefully. "I know this is kind of unexpected. We can just… start out as friends, if you want."

I trace the handle of my mug with the pad of my finger. "Are you seeing anyone else?"

"What? No!" The indignation in his voice makes me smile, and I shake my head.

"Edward, I realize that technically we haven't been together for four years. But over the past few months, I've felt like…" I trail off, searching for the words. "I've felt like… you were mine again. And I was yours. At least a little bit."

"Me too," he says. "I really thought I was going to wind up in Baltimore, and I hoped…" He shakes his head. "It was probably selfish of me to start talking to you and flirting with you again before I even knew where I'd end up. I mean… Jesus, I could have been staying on the West Coast."

I bite my lip. "The _Los Angeles Times_ has one of the biggest online news divisions in the country," I inform him, and his eyes flash.

"We're really doing this," he breathes.

"On one condition," I say, holding up a finger.

"Okay," he says carefully, watching me across my tiny breakfast table.

"You bring the Speedo out of retirement."

He grins. "I didn't bring it with me," he admits. "But I have some Calvin Klein boxer-briefs you once told me you were quite fond of."

. . .

"God, I missed this," I say, running my hand over the solid length of him as he shudders.

"It missed you," he cracks, but his breathing is harsh and the hand at the back of my neck is trembling with the effort not to squeeze too tightly. I continue to slide my hand up and down his length, marveling at the picture he makes reclined against my dark green bed sheets, bare-chested and breathless in the orange-tinted light of the setting sun, boxer-briefs halfway down his thighs. While he is still in ridiculous shape and his muscle definition is worthy of a calendar spread, his shoulders are less broad, his musculature less bulky.

"You're smaller," I murmur, and his eyes widen.

"Excuse me?" he demands, his head lurching up and eyes flitting from my face to where my hand continues to lazily pump him.

"Oh, God, not _there_," I laugh. "I mean… your body. Your upper body. You're still muscled, but you're not as _bulky_ as you were before."

He shrugs, apparently nonplussed about shrinking as long as it's not happening below his belt. "No more high-weight training," he says, letting his head fall back to my pile of pillows. "More cardio now."

"It works for you," I say, my voice conversational.

"You're making me crazy," he pants when my palm passes over his flared head, and I bite back a smile.

"I'm just getting reacquainted," I say innocently, sliding my hand down once more and squeezing the base of him lightly. Triumph shoots through me when his eyes roll and fall closed.

"I wouldn't mind getting reacquainted myself," he says, even as his hips begin to rise and fall slightly in time with my caresses.

"You'll get your turn," I say, but as I reach lower and cup his balls, his eyes fly open and he grabs my shoulders, rolling us over and settling atop me.

"Okay," he says, his voice rough and eyes ablaze. "If this is going to go any farther than a hand job, it's in your best interest to let me take my turn now."

I pretend to pout but my lips fall slack as he pulls down the cup of my bra and finds my nipple with his lips. Rolling it gently with lips and tongue, he trails his hands from my hips up my sides, reaching behind me and unfastening my bra strap before pulling the lacy fabric away from my body and dropping it off the side of the bed. He releases my nipple and takes the opportunity to slide his boxers the rest of the way off, leaving my panties as the only thing between us. He cants his hips against mine, pressing his substantial length to the spot aching for his attention, and he smirks when my breath catches audibly in my throat. Stoking the fire, he continues to rock against me.

"I realize this is an odd time to offer this disclaimer but we don't have to do this today," he says, even as his body continues to move. "We can slow things down a bit."

"Fuck that," I breathe, reaching down to cup the ass that is too often overshadowed by what's on the flip side. "We're doing this right the hell now."

His response is to grab for the waistband of my underwear and slide them down my legs before repositioning himself between them. He resumes sliding against me, and with no barrier between us, it's enough to make me desperate.

"Are you still…" He trails off and I frown, trying to catch his eye. "Do I need a condom?"

I bite my lip. "I'm still on the pill," I confirm, and as I gaze back up into his face, I know pregnancy isn't the only issue on the table. "The last time was almost a year ago. I've been tested twice since then."

He nods and presses his lips together for a moment before speaking again. "My last time was about five months ago," he admits. "But I wore a condom. And I was tested before that." He slides against me. "But I'll wear one if you want me to."

"I don't," I admit, and I can feel the rush of breath on my cheek as he exhales.

"Good," he says, pressing the blunt tip of himself to where I'm wet and trembling and aching.

"Go slow," I murmur and he nods, sliding just his tip inside me and pausing before continuing to bury himself in my body. I hiss as he presses in; the way he stretches me is deliciously familiar, even as my body is surprised by the intrusion. I reach down between us to touch the remaining length he has yet to fit inside me and whimper, leaving my fingers there and tracing down to cup his balls.

"Shit," he hisses as he slides the rest of the way in, and I tense slightly before relaxing, loving the way my body makes room for him. "God, you feel so good," he chokes out. "I don't know how long I can—"

I silence him with a soft press of my mouth to his. "I don't care," I whisper when I pull back, gazing into his hooded eyes. "We have time."

In three months of mind-blowing sex when we were twenty-two, it was never like this. He stays buried deep within me, his movements nothing more than small hitches of his hips in a slow, circular rhythm that grinds his pelvis against my clit. The delicious press of his hips pins me to the bed, rendering me nearly powerless to move, to chase my own release, and his eyes are watching me intently. "Slow enough?" he breathes, and I nod, content to let him control everything about this. "Bella." I wrap my legs around him, and the tip of him presses deeper; I moan and he pulls back slightly to look into my face. "You okay?"

"Out of practice," I say with a small smile, and he grins back at me.

"I have every intention of getting you back in shape," he says, continuing the wonderful swivel of his hips.

"I'm at your disposal, Coach," I reply, and he chuckles before dipping his head to suck my nipple into his mouth. I gasp, threading my hands through his wild hair, and he upgrades from slow swivels to shallow thrusts.

"Do you think you can be on top?" he asks after a few passes in and out of me, his voice needy and raw, and I nod, remembering the hungry way he would gaze up at me when I hovered over him. He rolls us slowly, his biceps flexing as he holds my waist, helping me settle slowly and gently on his hips. I hiss as he penetrates me even deeper and his eyes are a heated blend of possession and apology. Once he is seated all the way inside me, he loosens his grip on my hips, rubbing my thighs with his hands as I twitch against him. Warm palms slide inward, smoothing over my skin until his thumbs find the creases of my thighs; after gazing up at me for a minute, his thumbs find my lips and spread them, exposing my swollen clit to the cool air. I gasp at the new sensation and his eyes flash as he looks at my face before glancing down. Holding me open, he nudges his thighs to encourage me to move; as I do, the combined sensations of his considerable length sliding in and out of me and the cool air and friction on the exposed hypersensitive bundle of nerves at the heart of me rocket me toward my peak.

"Edward," I gasp, and I watch as his pectoral muscles tense in time with the movements of his hips.

"I want to watch you," he says. "I want to see you lose it."

I lean forward slightly, flattening my palms against his chest, and as the movement brings my exposed clit into contact with the base of his erection, I suck in a breath. "Oh, God."

"Bella," he urges, teeth clenched as he watches me and holds me open. A few more passes and I'm done, my back arching as my mouth falls open and I groan, my body going rigid as I grind myself down against him as hard as I can. "Shit," he hisses, his thumbs releasing me as his hands find my hipbones, gripping me tightly enough to bruise as his own back arches and he drives up into me. I can feel the warm pulse of his release fill me as I watch his beautiful face: eyes squeezed shut, mouth slack, a portrait of ecstasy. He shudders a few more times, his body still taut as my own milks the last of his release from him before he goes boneless and sinks back into the tangle of bed sheets, his eyes cracking open to find mine. "Jesus," he gasps, his hands coming to rest on my lower back. "I almost forgot how fucking amazing this was."

"Me too," I lie, as if I could have forgotten what it felt like to have that – to have _him_ – inside of me. I collapse forward, pressing our torsos together and delighting in the way I can feel his heart hammering beneath the warm skin of his chest. I feel certain he must be able to feel mine doing the same thing.

"I should tell you that while I'm not exactly twenty-two anymore, I'm going to want you again pretty immediately." His voice is still breathless, and I ghost a hand up his side.

"I'm fine with that," I reply, and I grin into his neck. _Fine._ Understatement of the century.

* * *

_Thanks for reading, reviewing, and recommending this story, and thanks for wanting more of these two. I'm so happy to be a part of this amazingly special fandom. Happy BD2 week! xo_


	3. The Legacy of the Purple Banana Hammock

**The Legacy of the Purple Banana Hammock**

**Summary: **"As much as you loved my Speedo, I'm fairly certain the elasticity will have eroded by now. Still, I thought you might enjoy these."

**Rating:** M (Like you even have to ask, with these two. Also, there are nutsack jokes.)

**Disclaimer:** In the words of Phoebe Buffay, "Not-NOT mine, not-NOT mine."

**Acknowledgement: **There are not sufficient words to describe how amazing my beta, HollettLA, is. One of these days I'm going to come up with some, though. Thank you, lovely lady, for leaving me notes that make me snort my beverages and promptly answering stupid DMs like, "is nutsack one or two words or hyphenated?" xo

* * *

"Well, Bella, there are other, more permanent options you can consider." Dr. Rauter washes her hands in the metal sink before switching off the faucet and shaking the excess water from her fingers. "Have you discussed the possibility of a more long-term method with your husband?" She bunches a paper towel between her hands and turns to face me, leaning against the ledge of the small counter behind her.

I shift on the exam table, rearranging the paper-thin gown purposefully over my knees as I attempt to surreptitiously peel the bare skin of the backs of my thighs from the paper beneath me. Why I am so concerned with modesty when this side of five minutes ago I was spread-eagled with my feet in stirrups is beyond me. "No," I say, tucking my hands beneath my thighs. "I mean, not really."

She nods, dumping the paper towel in the wastebasket and grabbing my chart from the counter. "Well, something to consider. It's very routine, minimally invasive, and very effective. Obviously, not something you want to consider until you and Edward are certain you don't want any more children, but once you are…" She smiles. "A lot of couples opt to take that route."

I rub my bare feet together. "Thanks. We'll definitely think about it."

She smiles again and says goodbye before slipping out of the exam room to let me get dressed, and as I slide off the table to retrieve my clothes from the chair in the corner, my eyes fall on the poster detailing the stages of fetal development. Dr. Rauter's words are rolling around in my mind as I step into my jeans.

* * *

"Lila, sweetheart, try to keep the crayons on the paper, okay? Mommy likes the kitchen table the way it is."

"Sorry, Daddy," our oldest child murmurs, making a concerted effort to do as her father asks, the point of her tongue peeking out from the corner of her mouth as she resumes shading the mane of a unicorn purple.

"Sorry, babe." Edward's clear gray-green eyes refocus on me as he resumes chopping a green pepper. "You were saying?"

"Hm? Oh. Just wanted to make sure you can make it to Lila's parent-teacher night on Thursday."

"You got it," he replies, though a small frown creases his brow. "Isn't she a little young for a parent-teacher conference?"

I shrug. "She's in kindergarten. I guess we've got to start sometime." Edward grunts his agreement as I scrape the tomatoes I have just finished dicing into a small bowl. "Also, Henry's twelve-month pediatrician appointment is next week. First thing Tuesday morning. Do you want to go in late, or do you want me to take a half-day?"

My husband pauses in his chopping and glances past me to the calendar hanging on the wall beside the phone before shaking his head. "I think I can do Tuesday," he says, the small paring knife making another straight cut through the vegetable on the chopping board before him. "Just let me double-check my schedule in the morning, okay?"

"Sure."

"Speaking of which, how did _your_ appointment go this morning?"

"Oh, you know, nothing quite like the always-pleasant experience of a pelvic exam to start the day off right," I quip, retrieving an onion from the refrigerator, and Edward chuckles.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you girls are tough." He's right; he has uttered that phrase on countless occasions, most frequently during my three pregnancies and the subsequent deliveries of our three children.

"I'm still optimistic that you'll find a way to make it up to me," I reply. It is an exchange we've been having since my first pregnancy, and yet this is the first time that an actual, concrete way he could repay that supposed debt comes to mind. The thought has no sooner appeared than it is banished from my mind by the sound of a high-pitched squeal from the baby monitor sitting on the counter at my elbow.

"I'll get him," I say, wiping my hands on a red-checkered dishcloth.

"Yeah, yeah," Edward mutters good-naturedly from the table. "Leave me to chop the onion."

I raise an eyebrow as I pause in the doorway. "Onion or diaper, Cullen?"

"Onion," he says without hesitation, and I smirk at him as I leave the kitchen and make my way up the stairs to the far end of the hall. As I push open the door to the nursery, my son's drooly smile greets me from his crib, where he stands clutching the rails. "Hey there, little man," I coo, and he blows me a raspberry in response.

Henry, the youngest in our brood, is by far our easiest baby. He rarely cries unless something is actually wrong, and once the problem is remedied, he goes right back to smiling. He more or less started sleeping through the night by the time he was six months old, and unlike our two daughters, he opted to wean himself to a bottle when he was nine months old. "Are you going to be ONE soon?" I ask, holding up a finger as he gurgles up at me from the changing table. "One?" He graces me with another wide smile and I grin back down at him. "Such a sweet boy." While both Lila and Emily got Edward's russet curls and gray-green eyes, Henry has my darker coloring. The length of his dark lashes, though, is all Edward, and while every mother says it, I have a feeling my son is going to be a heartbreaker. Once his wet diaper has been replaced by a dry one, I swing him to my hip and make my way back down the stairs, peeking into the living room where Emily is playing tea party with the hand-me-down Cabbage Patch doll of mine that Charlie brought with him on his last visit from Forks.

"Hey there, little man," Edward greets our son as I re-enter the kitchen, and when the baby reaches for him, Edward beams. I settle him into his father's lap and return to the counter to finish preparing dinner.

When I slide into bed beside my husband a few hours later, long fingers drag black-framed reading glasses from his nose and he closes his book, placing both on the bedside table and turning off his lamp before curling his body around me. The warmth of his solid chest meets the skin of my upper back, pushing a contented sigh from my lips and my fingers thread between the ones curled around my ribs as I let my eyes drift closed.

"Hear that?" he breathes into my hair, and my eyes pop open as I strain to listen in the darkness.

"What?" I whisper after a minute, unable to hear the telltale rustling of a child not quite settled.

"Nothing," he murmurs, and there is a smile in his voice as soft lips press a kiss to the curve of my shoulder. I roll to face him, taking in the all-too-familiar smirk that pulls at his mouth.

"Nothing, huh?" I breathe, and he guides our still-joined hands down to rest in his lap.

"Well, not _nothing_," he amends, and I can feel the familiar solid length of him beneath worn flannel pajama pants. Heat licks at my body as my top leg slides between his and his hand smooths down over the back of my tank top to rest on the thin cotton boy briefs covering my cheeks. Edward drops chaste kisses on my chin and each of my cheekbones and skims his hand over the back of my thigh before I roll fluidly on top of him, settling my hips against his; his hands cup the swells of my ass, pressing me into his hardness as my mouth covers his. His muffled whimper echoes in my mouth as I grind myself down against him, and as I rock lazily, I feel one of his hands slip beneath the waistband of my briefs and down over the curve of my rear end to find my center. His whimper turns to a pleased hum against my lips when he finds me wet already and swirls a single finger through the growing dampness between my legs before sliding the digit into me from behind. My breath hitches and I press myself even more urgently against his erection as my legs spread, knees resting on either side of his hips as his hand slowly works me.

I moan loudly, and his other hand immediately covers my mouth. "Shhh," he murmurs, his eyes flicking toward the baby monitor on my nightstand that stays blessedly silent. "I'm going to take care of you, baby, but you have to be quiet." I offer no response other than to keep rocking my hips between his hand and his arousal, and he lets go of my mouth to wrap his free hand around my hip. I bite my lip against the still-present desire to vocalize my pleasure, and the action doesn't go unnoticed. "Good girl," he breathes, adding another finger, and I am helpless to rein in the whimper that escapes me. After a few more thrusts, his long fingers slide out of me and he pulls his hand from my panties to grab the hem of my tank top, sliding it up and off without hesitation. "Gorgeous," he whispers as he sits up, his mouth finding my hardened nipple as his arms band around my waist. I continue to rock against him as his mouth works at my pebbled flesh, his hands once again kneading the cheeks of my ass in time with my movements.

There was a time, shortly after our first daughter was born, that I wouldn't let Edward touch me like this. It was well past the six-week post-partum benchmark at which we were medically cleared to resume sexual activity, but I couldn't quite make the transition back from new mom to wife. Between breastfeeding, my still-shrinking body, and the admittedly faint but very present silvery stretch marks beneath my breasts and around my hips, I couldn't imagine a universe in which I would ever feel sexy again. When he hesitantly broached the topic of sex three months after Lila was born, I told him I wasn't ready and, endlessly patient man that he is, he accepted it with a nod. I didn't feel nearly as guilty as I probably should have until a week or so later when I wandered into the bathroom while he was in the shower and he didn't even notice, caught up as he was in jerking off.

When I slid down the length of his body later that night and took him into my mouth, I thought he would cry from gratitude; it wasn't until after he came, gasping and clutching at my shoulders, that I acknowledged my own surge of arousal and subsequently realized how much I missed being with him like that, even if the realities of doing so were still somewhat daunting. After years of being with him, I should have known he'd take care of me.

It's been twelve years and three kids, and I know his body as well as I know my own. I arch away from him and he releases my nipple from his mouth with a ridiculous slurp, smirking up at me. I scoot backward and slide his pajama pants down his legs and off his feet; he sits up and whips off his Northwestern Swimming t-shirt as I shimmy out of my own underwear before returning to straddle his lap. Pressing my dripping flesh to his heat, I slide against him as he gasps and tightens his grip on my hips; I take the opportunity for payback, pressing the pads of my fingers to his soft lips. "Shhh," I mimic him teasingly, still rocking against his flesh. "Quiet." Angling my hips slightly, his tip bumps against my clit; I suck in a breath as my free hand wraps around him, sliding the head of his erection down toward my entrance and back up to my clit, a continuous circuit. When I slide him back to the heart of me, I press down slightly, taking just the tip of him inside my body before rising back up and setting him free, running his head back up along my flesh. Jaw clenched, he allows me a few more passes before his grip tightens ferociously against my hipbones and he sits up, pressing his desperate mouth to mine.

"Stop fucking teasing me," he growls against my lips, and the resulting surge of power only adds to my arousal. I drag his tip along me once, twice more for good measure, before sliding him back to my entrance and taking his entire length into my body, my bare ass settling against his thighs.

He moans low and long, sinking back against the pillows and running his open palms up and down my naked thighs as he gazes up at me, his eyes hooded and drunk with pleasure. The sparse hairs of his chest are coarse beneath my palms as I rest my hands against him and return to my slow rocking motion. "Better?" I breathe as I gaze down at him, and his mouth hangs slightly open as his eyes flick from my face down to where we are joined, watching as my hips undulate against his.

"God, yes." He begins to mirror my movements, rocking his own hips slowly for a few thrusts before I feel his thumbs press deeply into the dents of my hips and he halts his thrusts. "Wait," he says, a thin thread of desperation in his voice, and I still my movements. We're playing with fire here, and not for the first time. I sit atop him, unmoving but still joined, as I wait for him to regain control. "Okay," he says after a moment, and I lift myself on my knees until just the tip of him is still inside me before sliding back down the length of him. "Jesus," he gasps, his back arching slightly as his head sinks back into the pillow and his eyes drift closed. "I love feeling you like this. So good."

"You are," I murmur, leaning forward to press my bare chest to his as I lick at his lips. "You're so good." I continue to rock my hips, adding the slight swivel that I know he loves, and after a few passes, I once again feel his warm hands bracketing my body. "Fuck, Bella." He allows me a few more undulations before his grip tightens and he forcefully pulls me up and off him. "Wait, wait, baby, I have to get one." I whimper and he presses a kiss to my mouth. "I know, I know. Don't move." He shifts out from under me and rolls toward his nightstand, retrieving a condom and tearing the wrapper open before rolling it down his length. I watch the familiar movements as I lay on my side, my own hand finding its way to the swollen flesh between my legs, fingers sliding against slick folds. When his eyes focus on me once again, they flash, settling on my swirling fingers.

"God, I love watching you touch yourself."

I spread my legs a little further to give him a better view and make a few more lazy circles before I reach for him, clutching at his hips as he moves over me, one hand braced against the mattress beside my head as the other reaches down to line himself up. "You're so goddamn sexy," he breathes, and I feel the broad tip of him nudging between my legs. He makes a few passes up and down my slit, sending shocks of pleasure spiking up and down my spine before his hips push forward and he slides back into me with a relieved groan. "I could fuck you all night," he mutters into the skin of my neck, and a familiar thrill runs through me. Horny, dirty-talking Edward is still one of my favorites.

"Yeah?" I'm not nearly as articulate as he is, and I blame the considerable length of hot flesh sliding in and out of me.

"God, yes. I wake up so hard for you." He rears back and props himself up, glancing down between us to where he is gliding in and out of me. "So fucking sexy," he breathes, watching my hips rise to meet each of his thrusts. "I think about you like this all the time."

"Yes," I gasp, feeling the telling buzz start to trip through the hot blood surging in my veins.

One of my favorite things about sex with Edward is the way we each play our parts; he lets me act like the one in control until we both get to the point where we need to come, and then he takes over to push us both over the edge. Something about that dominant, possessive part of him makes me feel taken care of in the most primal of ways. I continue to lift my hips against his thrusts, wordlessly pleading with him to push me over the edge.

As if he can hear the words I don't speak, he peers down into my face. "What do you need, baby?" he breathes, slowing his pace, face soft but gaze still heated.

"Flip me over," I gasp, and without missing a beat, he slides out of me and wraps long fingers around my right ankle, crossing it over my left leg and pressing gently at my hip to roll me onto my stomach. Immediately I feel the warm planes of his bare chest against my back, his body covering mine like a quilt as his knees gently slide my legs apart.

"Like this?" he murmurs into my neck, biting gently at the skin over my shoulder blade as the tip of his erection unerringly finds my center.

"Yes," I breathe, tilting my hips slightly to take him back inside my body. He sheathes himself again and I spread my legs even wider to hook the tops of my feet around his calves; my cheek presses down into the warm bed sheet as gentle hands slide beneath my body to cup my shoulders. The twin sensations of his erection hitting the perfect spot inside of me and my clit rubbing against the mattress are combining to push me quickly toward my peak, and the steady rolling motion of his hips drags him torturously along every inch of my inner walls.

The steadily increasing hum in my body is cresting, pleasure spiraling outward from the very center of me, pulling my body taut as I surrender to the bliss of loving him. I am lost to everything but the waves that roll through me, making me feel too small for my own skin, too small to contain the flames licking up and down my body as my husband owns it.

"Fuck, Bella," he moans as I shudder and clench around him, and as my wave ebbs, he rears back, releasing my shoulders to plant one palm against the mattress and the other to the small of my back, flattening me to the bed as he begins fucking me in earnest. I cry out as his pistoning hips pound against my pleasure-sensitive core and he is too far gone to shush me, so I bury my face against the mattress, taking the thin cotton of the sheet between my teeth. "Yes," he hisses, the hand against my tailbone sliding down slightly to squeeze the fleshy curve of my ass cheek as his pace increases slightly, his balls slapping against my skin. Knowing how close he is, I reach down between my own legs and back to where we are joined, palming his balls and rolling them gently in time with his thrusts. "God, baby," he groans, his grip on my flesh tight and his pace punishing as he gives in to his frantic need to fuck. "Need it."

"Take it," I urge, as his words and his movements combine to reawaken the spark inside me. "Take me. Fuck me." I push up on my elbows slightly and glance over my shoulder at him before tipping my head to one side to expose the column of my neck. "Mark me."

As he moans, I know I've hit on one of his favorite weaknesses; Edward, though embarrassed to admit it, loves to mark me. Needing no further encouragement, lost as he is in the moment, his jaw finds the hollow of my neck and I feel the combination of teeth and tongue as he sucks and pulls at my skin, branding me as his body trembles and goes taut before shuddering and spilling into mine. I clench and release around him, milking the last of his orgasm from him as he hisses and rocks against me a few more times before going boneless, once again pressing my body into the mattress beneath the weight of him.

I feel him softening while puffs of warm breath hit the sweat-dampened skin of my neck, and Edward shifts his hips slightly to pull out but stays pressed against me for a few breaths before rising from the bed and padding into our bathroom. I turn over and pull the sheet to my armpits as he pushes the door nearly closed and a thin strip of yellow light appears around its edges. I hear the telltale sounds of condom disposal as I gaze unseeingly through the darkness at the ceiling for a beat before letting my eyes drift closed. My muscles are mush and endorphins still trip through my blood, leaving me jellied and spent, and the cotton of the bed sheet is nearly too much for my hypersensitive skin, which pebbles into goose flesh beneath it. I crack my eyes open as the bathroom door swings open and Edward flicks the light off, crossing back to the bed. I spare a quick glance at the baby monitor, which hums with blissfully uninterrupted static.

"I hate that part of it," Edward grouses as he slides back into bed beside me, and I frown slightly as I roll to my side to face him.

"What part of what?"

"The condom," he says, lifting his arm in invitation, and I scoot over to press myself to his side, propping my chin on his chest to look into his eyes. "I hate having to leave the bed to get rid of it. It's such a…buzzkill."

I chuckle. "Well, know what else is a buzzkill? A baby crying mid-act. And we're only just barely moving past _that_ particular part of the program."

My chin bounces against his chest as he laughs and tosses a quick glance at the still-silent baby monitor. "True."

"Speaking of which." I trail off, circling his nipple absently with a fingertip as I attempt to collect my scattered thoughts, and he stills my finger with a gentle hand around my wrist.

"I'm going to need at least a few more minutes," he murmurs. "I'm not exactly twenty-two anymore."

I laugh and press my palm flat over his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his gradually slowing heartbeat beneath his warm skin. "_So_ not where I was going with that. Sorry."

"Too bad," he says, but his recent orgasm has left him unable to muster up much genuine disappointment.

"I talked to Dr. Rauter about… other methods this morning."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I just…" I trail off, and I feel Edward's warm palm make an encouraging sweep up my spine. "I'm still not sure."

"Bella, we talked about this. I was only kidding. I'll wear condoms. Honest to God, I'm fine with it."

"No, but I hate them too. I hate the interruption of putting one on, and I hate the fact that you have to pull out almost right away, and I hate that you have to get up to get rid of it immediately after. I'm with you. I hate them, too."

"Okay."

"But I also hate the idea of putting hormones or chemicals in my body."

"I know." And he does. Perhaps because he's a doctor, or perhaps just because he's him, Edward has always been amazingly sensitive to everything to do with the female anatomy in general and mine in particular. He has never once pressured me to consider going back on the pill or the shot since I went off it ten years ago, after one of my fellow reporters almost died of a blood clot that was linked to her birth control and I asked him to start wearing condoms. "And that's okay," he assures me as I trace indistinct designs on the skin of his chest with my forefinger.

"But there are still…other options we haven't really considered."

"Okay." He gently stills my hand again and begins dragging his nails lightly up and down my forearm.

"But those would be more…yours to consider."

He is silent for a beat before his hand stops, and I feel his chest shift beneath my cheek as he angles his head to try and see my face. When I meet his gaze, his eyebrows are hitched.

"Bella Swan, are you trying to muster up the courage to ask me to get the snip?" He's going for indignation, but as always the gleam in his eye is his tell.

"My name's not Swan anymore, jackass," I spit, mock-hitting him in the chest. "I just…you haven't pushed me on the birth control thing, and I don't want to push you either. Dr. Rauter just mentioned it as…an option. And we'd never talked about it, so I thought I'd just…mention it."

"Okay."

I frown as I break eye contact and press my cheek back to his sternum. "Like, okay, check it off that I mentioned it, or okay, it's something we want to consider?"

"The second one," he says easily, and this time his nails are dragging up the bare skin of my back, raising goose bumps in their wake. I allow his declaration to hang heavy in the relative dark of our bedroom before I roll away slightly and resituate myself on my own pillow, gazing at his profile.

"Edward, if we're going to have this conversation, we have to really have it."

"Okay," he says slowly, turning to meet my eyes, but the small crease between his eyebrows gives away his confusion. "Isn't that what we're doing?"

"What if you want to have more kids someday?" He frowns, so I clarify. "With someone else?"

At that, his eyebrows are nearly at his hairline. "What?"

"What if, God forbid, something happened to me? Or what if something happened…with us? And if you met someone new – younger – who wanted to have a family with you?" I roll to my back and stare unseeingly at the ceiling. "I don't mean to be the downer here, but these are things you need to really think about if you're going to consider this, Edward. It's a serious decision. And you're only thirty-four."

"Bella. Baby. Look at me." I hesitate for only a moment before complying, and he cups my jaw in his warm hand. "When you're done having babies, _I'm_ done having babies. Our babies are going to be my only babies, regardless of what happens. If for no other reason than I would never do that to our kids; if something happened to you or to us, I would never go off and start another family. When we're done, I'm done, no matter what. Okay?"

"You don't have to decide this now," I argue. "You really should think about it."

He sighs softly and props himself up on an elbow, gazing down at me. "Are we done having babies?" he asks, his face expectant.

I am silent for a moment, thinking of our three beautiful children. Then I think of three pregnancies, three newborns, three experiences of epidural-free childbirth, and I bite my lip. "I think so. I mean, do you think we are?"

"Bella, I love the hell out of our kids. You know that. And I'd love any more that came along, but I feel lucky to the point of greedy for what we have. I also think we have a nice manageable level of chaos at the moment, and I think if we kept adding to it, the manageable part of it would go down as the chaos part went up. And I kind of like that we'll only be in our early fifties when all three of our kids are out of the house."

"So that's a yes, then."

He angles himself so that his torso is pressed against mine, his hand smoothing my hair back from my face. "If you want another baby, I'll knock you up right now," he says, mischief thick in his eyes. "But if you're happy with what we have, I'm happy."

"I'm happy," I say after a moment, and he nods.

"So we're done, then? Cullen, party of five?"

"Cullen, party of five," I agree.

* * *

"The procedure typically takes about thirty minutes to complete, after which you'll have about an hour-long recovery period at the office and then be sent home to recuperate." The consulting urologist hands Edward a pamphlet and he takes it with a nod, his expression mildly surprised. "Thirty minutes? That's it?"

"That's it," the doctor says. "It's a very routine outpatient procedure."

"And what exactly is the procedure?" I ask, my hand on Edward's forearm. He might be a doctor and completely capable of translating medical jargon, but I'm not, and I'm very attached to my husband and all of his parts. The one we're talking about happens to be a personal favorite, and Journalism 101 hammered home the importance of getting all of the facts in as much detail as possible. This seems like a particularly ideal time to make use of that very valuable lesson.

"Well, the specifics are detailed in the literature I just gave to your husband, but the nuts and bolts – if you'll excuse the expression – are that we numb the scrotum with a local anesthetic and make two tiny incisions on either side to access the vas deferens, which is then cut and cauterized."

"And the, uh, effects are immediate?" I ask.

The doctor shakes his head. "Actually no; that's a common misconception. A woman can still get pregnant immediately after her partner undergoes the procedure, so we recommend that a sperm count be performed within two months after the procedure, or following twenty ejaculations."

Edward shifts slightly in his chair and I tamp down on a smile. He's seen doctors with their hands inside my body up to their forearms, for crying out loud; this perceived blow to his modesty is a drop in the bucket. "Good to know," he murmurs, and I squeeze his hand.

"Would you like to take that home and look over it, or would you like to go ahead and schedule the procedure?" Dr. Salzman asks, a bright smile on his face.

I look to Edward, who is flipping through the glossy pamphlet. "I, uh, guess we can go ahead and schedule it," he says before glancing in my direction. "Right, babe?"

"Whatever you think," I reply, squeezing his arm again. "Ball's in your court." I wince. "So to speak."

"Well, we have availability next week," Dr. Salzman says helpfully, and the widening of Edward's eyes is barely noticeable.

"Next week?" he repeats, and the doctor nods.

"This is our slow time of year."

"There's a slow time for… uh… vasectomies?" I ask, trying to tone down the incredulousness in my voice.

"Oh yes," he says with a bright smile. "We book up for March Madness nearly a year in advance." Off my frown, he clarifies. "The recuperation period generally involves a lot of sitting on the couch without being expected to get up."

I roll my eyes. Only men would use recuperation from testicular surgery as a justification for watching sports. "I'm, uh, not really a basketball fan," Edward admits and I laugh, relieved when a small chuckle comes from beside me. "Okay then," he says. "Next week."

"Friday?" I suggest, glancing at Edward and then at the doctor. "I can take Friday off and then I'll be home with you all weekend."

After the logistics are hammered out and Edward has been presented with more literature, as well as the standard tome of medical release forms, we are on our way home, an appointment card in his wallet for the following Friday. "As if I could forget," he had mumbled good-naturedly when the receptionist handed him the card.

"Fantastic," he mutters now from the passenger seat as he flips through the papers.

"What?" I ask, checking my blind spot before switching lanes.

He holds up a page to read aloud. "'The local anesthetic is generally the most painful part of the procedure, with some patients likening the sensation to a bee sting, followed by a 'just-been-kicked' feeling in the lower abdomen,'" he recites, then shakes his head. "I've always wondered what it would feel like for a bee to sting me in the balls." I bite my lip against the giggle that threatens to surface as he continues reading. "'Once the scrotum is numbed, the patient may feel a slight pulling sensation in the area during the procedure.'"

One glance at his mildly distressed face and I can't help toying with him. "I'll pull on the area tonight as a thank you," I offer, and he sighs.

"Hot as that is, the sense of impending doom at the idea of a bee sting followed by a kick in the nuts is sort of a libido-killer."

"Too bad," I reply as I merge onto the main road.

"I might change my mind, though," he offers as a disclaimer, and I nod at the windshield.

"Noted." He continues flipping through the paperwork, and when I glance at his face, I see his brow furrowed; I can't tell if it's in consternation or merely concentration. "Edward?"

"Hm?" He doesn't look up.

"It's okay if you want to change your mind. I would totally understand."

In my periphery I see his head turn to look at my profile. "Bella, no. It's okay. I'm partially kidding. I mean, I knew this wasn't going to be a weeklong vacation at Sandals Jamaica. It's just…I think you've got to psych yourself up for something like this. I'm just thinking out loud."

"Okay."

"And hey." His hand slides across the center console to rest on my thigh. "I saw every second of everything you went through to bring our kids into the world, and without pain medication. What kind of man would I be if I couldn't handle a thirty-minute 'routine outpatient procedure' in the face of that?"

"It's not a competition, babe," I remind him, even as part of me basks in the familiar feelings of validation that come with his ever-obvious awe of the so-called miracle of childbirth.

"Still," he says, returning his focus to the paperwork in his lap even as his hand stays on my denim-covered thigh. "I'm doing this for us. It'll be fine."

I leave him to read in peace for the remainder of the drive, and when we pull into our driveway, Lila comes racing down the front porch steps and makes a beeline for her father. "Daddy! I did it!" she shrieks as she barrels full-tilt into his legs, arms overhead in expectation of being hoisted into the air.

"Oof," Edward grunts, doubling over as her elbow comes into contact with his fly. He takes a deep breath, clearly assessing any possible damage before straightening and lifting Lila to his hip.

"Might want to get used to that sensation, from what I hear," comes Emmett's voice from behind the screen door atop the porch, and Edward frowns.

"I thought Rosalie was our sitter tonight," he says in lieu of a more traditional greeting.

"She is," he shrugs as he pushes the screen open and steps through it. "Diaper change. I brought pizza for dinner."

"_Daddy_, I said I _did_ it," Lila interjects, placing a hand on each of Edward's cheeks and forcibly turning his head to face her.

"Sorry, bug. Did what?"

"The magic trick. I did the magic trick for show an' tell, and I did it _right._"

"Great job, baby," he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek before slipping his mouth to the curve of her neck and blowing a raspberry into her skin. She squeals and wriggles and demands to be put down; once her father has complied, we make our way up the front steps. "Thanks for the pep talk, Em," he says to his hulking former roommate, who claps him on the back.

"I don't think all the pep talks in the world would be enough," Emmett offers helpfully, and I shoot him a glare that he either misses entirely or chooses to ignore.

"Just you wait," Edward says smoothly. "Your day will come."

Emmett snorts as he holds the screen door open for Lila before waving a hand for us to step inside. "'Hi, I'd like you to cut through my sac and short-circuit my nuts?' Uh, no thank you."

"Zip it, McCarty." Rosalie's voice floats to us from the bottom of the stairs, where she appears with Henry on her barely-there hip and Emily holding her free hand. "Or you might find yourself cut off."

"You can cut me off all you want," Emmett replies, flicking a glance to her rounded belly before grinning at her. "I'm not cutting _it_ off."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Emmett, it's not _castration_, it's sterilization," I huff, shrugging out of my coat. "Grow up."

"I'm just saying. He's a brave man." Once again, Emmett claps Edward on the shoulder and my husband visibly flinches.

"Okay, can we stop talking about this now, please? I heard the word pizza."

"Pizza!" Emily cheers as she makes her way from Rosalie's side to mine, dragging a one-eared stuffed rabbit behind her.

* * *

"You can expect some bruising and some swelling," the pre-op nurse says to Edward, and even though I know she's talking about his scrotum and not his penis, it takes everything in me not to make a comment about the idea of swelling in his already substantial man-parts. As if he's reading my thoughts, Edward tosses me a sly sideways smirk.

"Okay." This is the first time I've seen him in a hospital gown, and I can't lie: I sort of want to think up a reason for him to stand up so I can get the rear view. "Stop," he whispers as the nurse leaves the room, and I shift in my chair.

"What?"

He flicks his gaze to the closed door and then back to me, his voice a familiar low rumble. "With that look."

"What look?" I try to school my features into something resembling innocence, but I'm still distracted by the knowledge that he's naked under a paper-thin garment.

"You have sex in your eyes," he murmurs, his own eyes blazing. "And I'm going to be suitably embarrassed if I have a hard-on when the nurse comes in to jab a needle into my junk."

The mental image of another woman seeing Edward's erection – let alone touching or theoretically puncturing any part of his junk – is enough to extinguish the fire. "Sorry."

A gentle smile touches his lips as he allows his head to fall back against the pillow. "Now I know why you bitched about these things," he says, pinching a part of his gown between his thumb and forefinger. "They're awfully… drafty."

I laugh. "Just wait until you're spread-eagled. Considerably more drafty then."

A muscle at the hinge of his jaw clenches, and it's the first hint of anxiety I've seen on his beautiful face all morning. Sometimes I forget the adage that doctors make the worst patients; the only time I've seen Edward as anything remotely close to the patient side of the equation was when I was in the hospital having our kids. I run a hand through his hair and drop a kiss to his forehead. "No second thoughts?"

"None," he says, his voice resolute. "Unless you're having second thoughts about more babies." I shake my head and he nods, his face determined. It's a familiar expression, and my mind flashes to the first time I saw it, when he was standing behind a starting block wearing a small scrap of purple spandex. It's his game face. "Okay then."

I press another kiss to his face and lean in to his ear, dropping my voice. "Can you steal one of these from your office?" I murmur, plucking at the fabric covering his muscled shoulder.

"A gown?" he asks, eyebrow arched.

"Yeah."

"Probably."

"Do it."

His mouth falls open and then snaps shut as the door to the exam room swings open and Dr. Salzman enters. "Good morning, Dr. Cullen, Mrs. Cullen. All ready?"

After a quick glance at me, Edward faces the urologist and nods. "As I'll ever be." I bend to press a soft kiss to his mouth, and as I make a move to straighten, I feel his long fingers wrap around my wrist. "I have a surprise for you later," he murmurs before releasing me, and the mischief in his eyes throws me for a loop. I can't imagine Edward being horny after having his junk snipped, and even if he were, he's not medically cleared to do anything about it for almost a week anyway. My confusion must show on my face, because he smirks. "Love you."

"Love you too," I say, watching as they wheel him into the operating room.

* * *

Following Lila's effervescent greeting of her father the week prior, we made the prudent choice to leave the kids with Edward's parents for a sleepover so that he can have at least one day to recuperate in peace. It took me three days to convince him that telling his mother he was having a vasectomy was something he could handle; still, the flush on his cheeks when we dropped them off early this morning before heading to the doctor's office was adorable. Now, though, I think he'd endure the mortification of singing it from the rooftops if it guaranteed that no tiny elbows would come in contact with the space between his legs.

He groans as he settles himself on the couch, and I make my way to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water and two Tylenol, along with a cloth-covered cold compress. "I never thought I'd willingly put something frozen against my nuts," Edward says, the cold pack disappearing beneath the elastic waistband of his gray sweats. He hisses slightly as he situates it between his legs and shifts as he tries to find a comfortable position.

"Thirty minutes max, the paper said," I remind him, and one corner of his mouth turns up as he gazes up at me.

"As if I could forget."

"We wouldn't want it to fall off, after all."

"That would be senselessly tragic," he agrees, running a hand through his hair and letting his head drop against the back of the couch with a sigh. "Not to mention it would render today's undertaking entirely moot." I allow myself a moment to appreciate the taut tendons in his neck before grabbing the television remotes from the coffee table and situating them on the armrest beside him.

"Do you want anything?" I ask, dropping a kiss to his soft hair.

"Nah," he replies, flicking the TV on. "But I'll keep in mind that you offered to be at my beck and call."

I grin. "Too bad you can't do anything really fun with it."

He glares at me. "Evil woman."

I hope he can hear my laugh as I disappear up the staircase.

Once I have dumped a load of the kids' laundry into the wash and folded a stack of clean, dry sheets and towels and returned them to their respective homes, I check on Edward. He has resituated himself to a reclined position, and while he nearly always has a noticeable bulge at the front of his pants, I can see from the exaggerated one that the ice pack is still in place. I drop to my knees beside the couch and press a kiss to his forehead. "Hey," I murmur, and green eyes slide open.

"Hey."

"You might want to take that thing off," I say, tilting my head in the direction of his lap.

"Oh. Yeah." His hand disappears down the front of his pants, and I can't fight the smirk that graces my lips. He spares me a sideways glance. "You'd make a pretty shady nurse," he says, passing me the now barely-cold compress and shifting slightly against the cushions. "Ogling your patients like that."

I shrug. "Which is why I'm so thrilled to be working in a different career field entirely."

"One that allows you to write speculative pieces about genitals," he fires back, and I smile. It's been a while since he's brought that up, but whenever he does, it makes me feel like I'm twenty-two again, staring at him from a bleacher seat and breathing in the smell of chlorine.

"Exactly." I rise. "Want some lunch?" I offer, and he nods. "Requests?" He grins and I roll my eyes. "Seriously?"

"Hey, you asked."

"You know, you're a grown man, and there's going to come a time when your body's not going to metabolize that crap nearly as quickly as it does now, regardless of how many mornings a week you hit the pool."

"Too true. But, as Emmett so tactfully put it, I just had my nuts short-circuited, so until that day comes…" He trails off before bringing a hand to rest on his flat stomach. "Besides, I don't remember hearing any complaints about my physique lately. From you or any other nurse." I roll my eyes again at the not-so-subtle reference to the new young RN at Edward's practice who doesn't appear to be at all deterred by the wedding ring on his finger or the framed photos of his three kids and wife on the desk in his office. I feel sorry for the wives of other doctors in the office who aren't nearly as certain of their husband's fidelity as I am of mine. That said, the majority of the other physicians at Windy City Oncology Associates are at least ten years older than Edward.

"Watch yourself, Cullen. You're in an awfully vulnerable position to be provoking my jealousy."

His hand finds mine and he tugs me downward. "Believe me," he breathes against my lips. "You have no reason to be jealous."

I let him press a kiss to my mouth before straightening. "Fine. Macaroni and cheese and hot dogs it is."

His grin returns. "See? Even out of commission, I'm irresistible."

It isn't until later that night, once the house is cleaned and the laundry is done and I've met the deadline for the story assignment I've been working on for the past three days that I remember Edward's words from before his procedure.

"Hey," I say, bending to turn on the bedside lamp on my nightstand and watching as Edward does the same on his side of the bed before palming two Tylenol into his mouth and taking a swig of water.

"Hey what?" he replies, licking his lips.

"What was my surprise?"

"Oh. Right." He places the glass on his nightstand and runs a hand through his hair before placing his hands on his still-narrow hips and cocking his head to one side. "I'm actually not sure I should show you."

"Excuse me?" He shrugs, and I feel my eyes narrow. "I think I was an exceptionally good nurse today," I argue, even though I don't know what I'm arguing for.

"You were," he agrees.

"Then why wouldn't you show me?"

He considers me for a moment. "I'm not sure you'll be able to control yourself."

"I beg your pardon."

Infuriatingly, he shrugs again. "It's been my past experience that what I'm about to show you might whip you into a lustful frenzy."

And cue the involuntary eye-roll. "Edward. Sweetheart. As much as I love you and, I admit, want you, I have absolutely no desire to break one of my favorite parts of you. So, if for no other reason than I don't wish to prolong this little window of necessary celibacy, I can promise I won't lay a finger on you."

He pretends to debate for a brief moment before he pulls his t-shirt over his head and drops his hands to the drawstring of his sweats. "Okay. You promised. Don't go attempting to steal my virtue."

"Like you have any left to steal," I snort, even as curiosity burns me from the inside out. It isn't until he drops his sweats that I begin to burn from something else entirely. Because there, standing in front of me in all of his physical perfection, is my husband. In a pair of tight black briefs. "What…?" I trail off, eyeballing the closest thing I've seen to a Speedo in twelve years.

He shrugs. "They recommended wearing a Speedo or a jockstrap or briefs for support," he says, and I can hear delight at my reaction in his voice. If I could tear my eyes from his crotch, I have no doubt I'd see a similar satisfaction dancing in his eyes. "As much as you loved my Speedo, I'm fairly certain the elasticity will have eroded by now. Still, I thought you might enjoy these."

"You're going to have to wear those again, you know," I inform him, eyeballing the familiar prominence beneath the dark cotton.

"You've made an awful lot of wardrobe requests today," he says, and my mind flashes back to seeing him in the hospital gown this morning and knowing there was nothing beneath it.

"I have," I agree, and I finally manage to tear my eyes away from his underwear.

He tilts his head slightly as he considers me, a small frown pulling at his eyebrows. "Do you really find these sexier than what I usually wear?"

I shake my head. "Not at all." It's not even a tiny bit untrue, but I find that explaining the reasoning behind it is harder. "It just… reminds me of the beginning. When I first saw you." I can feel the slight warmth spreading across the back of my neck, and I know a flush is probably staining my cheeks. That he can still make me blush frustrates me almost as much as it thrills me. "It's like…role-play."

His eyes widen slightly as he stares at me over the expanse of our bed, and I take a moment to enjoy the way the warm yellow light of our twin lamps highlights the definition of his chest. "Role-play?" His voice is a slightly higher pitch than normal, and I feel suddenly guilty that I'm likely about to turn him on when he can't do anything about it.

"Yeah. Like…you know how you always tell me that you love my simple lacy bra-and-panty sets even more than the sexy lingerie I wear on special occasions?" He nods mutely, and I can tell as I watch him that at least half of his brain has checked out of the conversation and is mentally cataloguing some of the sluttier pieces I've donned for him over the years. "Okay," I say loudly, before he can get himself worked up. "Well, it's like that. I like what you always wear because it's so YOU, and I find you sexier than anything else. But when I think about the Speedo – and you wearing those right now – it takes me back to college, and to our early twenties, when we didn't have kids and jobs and piles of laundry and a mortgage."

I can see the wheels turning in his mind. "Looks like I'm going to have to start my own 'special drawer' then," he says with a smirk, flicking his eyes to the small top drawer in my dresser where I keep my aforementioned slutty undergarments and various other "accessories."

"Looks that way," I agree, pulling back the covers and sliding into bed. He gingerly does the same, and once he finds a comfortable position on his back, I curl into his side and wrap my arm around his torso. "More-than-like you," I murmur, tipping my chin for a kiss.

"I love you, too," he returns, pressing his lips to mine.

* * *

In the weeks that follow his vasectomy, I try valiantly not to let Edward see my amusement at what he repeatedly refers to as the "small indignities" of post-procedure healing. I remind him that a snip to the nuts has nothing on the not-so-small indignities of a post-partum body, but it does little to make him less anxious for the point at which he's one hundred percent back to normal. Beyond the manscaped and bruised – and yes, slightly swollen – testicular area that is, admittedly, more funny-looking than his normal scrotum, Edward's new hobby appears to be jerking off. While the swelling and bruising only lasted for a few days post-op, my husband appears to have interpreted the urologist's clarification that his spunk would be sperm-free only after twenty or so ejaculations as, "the more you beat off, the sooner you'll be able to ride your wife bareback." As a result, I've made it a point to find reasons to slip into the bathroom while he's in the shower just in an attempt to catch him red-handed. So to speak.

"How many is that?" I ask as he steps out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, a curl of steam following him through the open door.

"What?" he asks, then flushes at my raised eyebrow before crossing to his dresser. "Were you this mean when I married you?"

"I'm just asking," I tell him, not even attempting to hide the amusement in my voice. "I doubt you've whacked off this much since you were a virgin teenager."

Boxer-briefs in hand, he closes his top drawer and turns to face me. "Or since I was living in California," he says lightly.

I grin. "That's right. Spending your nights with your anatomy textbook diagrams."

He shrugs. "While it wasn't my motivation at the time, I would think you of all people would find it preferable to the alternative for a single young doctor in his prime."

"Why yes, Edward, I'm thrilled that you spent your nights self-actualizing instead of trolling for California girls," I tell him, injecting as much eye-roll as possible into my voice.

"Really, you should be flattered," he says, stepping into his boxer-briefs and pulling them up beneath the towel before unwinding it from his waist and dumping it on the foot of the bed.

"That you spent our time apart loving yourself?"

"That I want to be inside you so badly that I'm borderline chafing." He weaves around the bed with the grace of a predatory jungle cat, all lean sinew and laser-sharp focus. When he speaks again, his voice is an octave lower, a familiar sultry rasp. "That I want to feel you around me so much that I've made myself late for work twice." His green eyes bore into me as he comes to halt inside my personal space, and when my breath catches in my throat, a lazy smile spreads across his face, which only serves to make him look even more like a hunter. "That I'm desperate to feel you come with nothing between us. To fill you with me."

Arousal is instant, and I know from experience that the heat licking its way up my body is evident in the color of my face. As I moisten my lips and open my mouth to reply, Lila appears in the doorway to our bedroom in her pink fairy pajamas. "Mama?" Edward graces me with a sly smile before sliding away from me and stepping into our closet to retrieve the rest of his clothes. Willing my body to cool, I turn to face our daughter and set about starting the day. By the time Lila and Emily are eating Cheerios at the kitchen table and Henry is wearing nearly as much baby oatmeal as he's eaten, I have managed to pack my own work bag, fill Edward's travel coffee mug, and pack snacks for Lila to take to kindergarten and Emily to take to day care. Henry's diaper bag is restocked and waiting by the back door, and I have miraculously managed not to get in the line of fire of my son's oatmeal-smeared fingers, a Herculean feat considering I'm wearing one of my more expensive suits. My mind flashes back to Edward's assessment of our "manageable" level of chaos, and in this moment I couldn't agree more. As I'm zipping Lila's Little Orphan Annie lunch bag closed, I feel Edward's body against my back before his large hand slides around my hip and across my stomach. His lips press against the back of my neck before I feel the point of his chin come to rest on my shoulder.

"You're amazing," he murmurs, and I turn in the small circle of his arms to face him.

"Amazing, huh?"

He nods, gesturing toward our brood of ostensibly eating children and the packed lunch and diaper bags near the door. "You're SuperMom."

"Thank you."

"Twenty-four, by the way."

I frown, attempting to place the apparent non sequitur. "What?"

"You asked how many that was." He drops a quick peck on my lips. "Twenty-four."

I flick a glance to where our daughters are sitting, entirely oblivious to our conversation given Henry's discovery of the projectile potential of baby cereal. "Twenty-four?!" I can't keep the surprise out of my voice; I know for a fact that Edward hasn't taken twenty-four showers in the past sixteen days.

The lascivious smirk I've loved for years tugs the corners of his pink lips upward. "I'm very goal-oriented."

"No wonder you're chafing."

"You could help matters along, you know," he murmurs, glancing at our still-distracted kids before pressing his body into mine ever so slightly. "Speed up the process."

While Edward was cleared to resume "normal sexual activity" a week after his procedure, as luck would have it, I was on my cycle that week and was getting far too much enjoyment out of my newfound hobby of attempting to catch my husband stroking himself in the shower. I tap my fingers against my lower lip as if I'm considering the proposition. "Would that make me SuperWife?"

"It'll just make you super all around," he grins. If I didn't know better, some days I would swear my husband was a frat boy.

"Only if you wear the briefs," I stipulate.

"I'll wear whatever you want me to, Amanpour." The reference carries me back to a darkened porch and a cluster of co-ed boys traipsing their way down a hill in the winter before depositing me at the memory of the first time I saw my husband sans pants.

"Amanpour, huh?" He smirks and I'm opening my mouth to suggest I might recreate our first night together when a marble-sized glob of oatmeal flies across the few feet between me and the kitchen table and nails me directly in the lapel. "Perfect," I groan, even as my daughters erupt into giggles and Henry, elated at their reaction, claps his chubby, oatmeal-covered hands in glee, flinging residual flecks of his breakfast over everything in the immediate vicinity. Edward chuckles and turns away from me, crossing to the table and pressing a kiss to our son's fuzzy head.

"Good shot, little man," I hear him murmur, and while I should feel indignant, I'm too busy checking out the way his black slacks hug his waist and his dark green shirt pulls taut over his shoulders. Edward's daily swimming regimen does wonders for his physique and, if I'm being honest, does even more for my libido. It's practically Pavlovian, what the smell of chlorine on this man's skin does to me.

* * *

"Okay, wish me luck."

"Good luck," I say automatically without looking up, then frown at my checkbook. "Wait, what am I wishing you good luck for?"

Edward sighs dramatically when I lift my gaze. "I'm just not feeling like you're as _invested_ as you could be."

"Babe, what the hell are you talking about?"

"The second sterility test. It's today."

"Oh!" I snap my checkbook shut. "Right! Sorry. Okay, good luck." When Edward returned from his first sterility test two months after his procedure looking like someone had just kicked his cat, I was powerless to stop the chuckle that erupted from my lips. While seventy percent of men test sterile two months following a vasectomy, apparently Edward was in the thirty percent whose swimmers refuse to go down without a fight. Granted, when we decided to make babies, it always happened relatively quickly. At the time, he pretended to grouse about our super-fertility robbing him of the opportunity to enjoy a lot of baby-making sex, even as the elated twinkle in his eye belied his true joy. Now that the numbers are in, it's pretty clear that while I may be fertile, Edward's swimmers are, unsurprisingly, as fast and as motivated as their creator. I rise from the table and kiss his freshly shaved cheek. "Is 'knock 'em dead' an appropriate sentiment?"

"Works for me."

"Is your mother still good for tonight?"

He nods, shrugging into his coat. "Are you kidding? She'd take our kids and raise them herself if we'd let her." A grimace touches his features. "And can we not jump so quickly from talking about my sperm to talking about my mother?"

I laugh. When we moved back to Chicago after Edward finished his residency at Johns Hopkins, one of the undeniable benefits was being surrounded by people we loved. Thanks to the proximity of Edward's parents and Emmett and Rosalie, we rarely want for a babysitter, and working with Angela on the political blog she spent years trying to get off the ground has afforded me the flexibility required to parent three small kids and still have a career. "Apologies."

"Emmett and Rose are picking us up at six," he reminds me, looping the strap of his backpack over one shoulder. I grin; very few grown men can pull off carrying around a backpack in their professional lives, and even fewer doctors. Edward, as usual, is the exception to the rule. "Can you dig my pin out of your jewelry box?" My grin widens, and Edward flushes slightly. "Don't start."

"No problem, Hall of Famer." I pause and cock my head to one side in thought. "You know, evidently that designation applies to all of you."

"Seriously. Stop." When Edward was inducted into the Northwestern University Athletic Hall of Fame last year, the key theme of the weekend – for him, anyway – was embarrassment. While his parents and I, and even his old roommates, were over-the-moon proud of him, Edward's humility made him feel completely uncomfortable in the spotlight. That members are invited back every year to welcome the new class of inductees just gives me an annual opportunity to pick on him.

"See you later, stud."

He rolls his eyes but grins as he pecks me on the lips. "Fingers crossed that at least one part of me can no longer swim."

"You bet."

* * *

"Got your pin?" I'm not the only one who loves teasing Edward about his Hall of Fame status; Emmett might get even more joy out of ribbing him than I do.

"Blow me," Edward grumbles as he clicks his seat belt into place in the passenger seat. Rose grins at me from where she's sitting beside me in the back, her own seat belt stretched to its limit around her swollen belly. "Sorry about the change in plans."

"No problem," Emmett replies. "Your office is on the way anyway."

"Hey babe," my husband tosses over his shoulder, and I rub his shoulder.

"Hey yourself."

Edward and Emmett fall into their familiar back-and-forth, and I return to getting all of the details from Rosalie's latest sonogram appointment as Emmett navigates the short drive to Northwestern. Once there, we park and cross the familiar campus; Edward's hand in mine as we approach the Allen Center brings back memories of the four months we spent here as undergrads, stealing kisses on sidewalks and inside buildings and once even on the baseball diamond after one of Jasper's games. "Surprise, surprise: I have to pee. _Again_," Rose grumbles as Emmett holds the door open for the rest of us to step inside.

"I'll walk you," Emmett says, tossing us a backward glance. "See you guys in there."

"I don't know how you did this three times," she says in parting, her palm smoothing over the curve of her body.

"It wasn't without its challenges," I agree, remembering all too clearly the less fun aspects of pregnancy as I watch her waddle away.

"Speaking of which." Edward's voice is a low rumble against my ear as he presses his lips to my temple. I pull back to look into his face, and I know the verdict before he speaks from the triumphant gleam in his eyes. "All clear."

I grin as I turn to face him completely, smoothing my hands over the lapels of his charcoal suit, my index finger finding the small gold pin on the left one. "I feel like Hallmark should make 'Congratulations, you're sterile' cards for moments like this."

He interlaces his hands on the small of my back and pulls me into him slightly. "I think you'll agree that what I went through deserves more than just a greeting card."

The confused frown on my face is entirely for show. "I'm not sure I follow you."

"Follow me?" he snorts. "Please. You know I always make sure you come first." His grin at the barely-disguised double-entendre is positively wolfish.

"I'm counting on it."

"Get a room, you guys. Seriously. I can't believe you're still like this after three kids." Rosalie's interruption creates only enough space between us to make our posture socially acceptable, and Emmett laughs. "How the hell do you think they _got_ those three kids, babe?"

"Shut up, both of you," I say. "The Hall of Famer needs to find his seat."

Ninety minutes later, once the new class of alumni athletes has been inducted, guests have made their way to the makeshift bar, and Edward has posed for pictures with the new members, he finds me gazing up at his photo on the wall where it is embedded in a plaque lauding the numerous accomplishments he achieved during his days as a Wildcat. The photo is so Edward: eyes bright, hair wild, grin open. The differences now are subtle: shorter hair with just a few strands of barely-noticeable gray, fine crinkles at the corners of his eyes that echo his father's, less hulking musculature. But the eyes are the same and the grin hasn't changed, and while I was head-over-heels in love with him when I was twenty-two, it pales in comparison to the love I have for him now. "Look at you," I say when I feel his arms band around my waist and his chin rest on my shoulder. "So young."

"Yeah. Doesn't seem possible that that was twelve years ago."

"Not at all." I remember the night he broke the record, the night I met his family, the night he took me home.

"Looking at you in this dress makes me feel like I'm twenty-two again, though," he murmurs just loud enough for me to hear him, and I smile at the wall.

"I know the feeling." His chin leaves my shoulder and his lips press against the curve of my neck.

"Come on," he murmurs, and I break my staring contest with twenty-two-year-old Edward to focus on my thirty-four-year-old husband.

"Are we leaving?"

"No. Emmett's catching up with Jasper at the bar. Take a walk with me." I follow him through the lobby and out into the cool spring evening; by now he knows that I'll follow him anywhere. He drapes his suit coat over my shoulders and tucks me into his side as we walk.

"So… the all-clear, huh?"

"The all-clear," he confirms, and his long fingers tighten infinitesimally around my upper shoulder. The sidewalk we're on is familiar, and I realize as we amble along that he's guiding us toward the aquatic center.

"You realize the pool is probably locked, right?"

He shrugs. "Probably." He seems unconcerned, so I relax and lean into him. His pace is deliberately slow as he matches his strides to mine. "Cullen, party of five," he says after a moment, and I tilt my head up to look at him. As is often the case, I'm struck by the incongruity, the way his sharp jaw line, sharp slope of his nose, and sharp wit can exist so harmoniously with his soft eyes, soft mouth, soft heart.

"Party of five," I agree, giggling as my mind flashes to an angst-ridden 90s television show.

"What's funny?" he asks, and I gaze up at the stars.

"Absolutely nothing." As I move to resettle beneath the crook of his arm, he draws to a sudden halt and spins us so that he's facing me, his hands on my hips. I look up to see him playfully glaring down at me.

"I swear to God, if you're thinking about asking me to reverse the procedure…"

"God, no," I assure him. "I've missed feeling you." I rise to my toes to press a soft kiss to his mouth. "All of you."

His fingers flex against my hips and he shifts his weight. I smile up at him, watching the effect my words have on his face, which goes from teasing to aroused in a blink. He breaks my gaze to glance quickly behind me before he spins and takes my hand, pulling me gently along behind him in the opposite direction from the aquatic center. I follow wordlessly as he weaves his way through a parking lot until we are walking alongside the soccer field toward Lake Michigan; across the water I can see the illuminated Chicago skyline shining through the darkness as Edward brings us to a halt beneath a tree.

"Remember when I jumped into the lake in my underwear?" he asks, pulling my back to his front as he leans against the trunk of the tree and wraps his arms around my waist.

"As if I could forget," I say. "That was the first time I saw your bare ass."

There is a pause before he asks, "What?"

I laugh. "I never told you this? I was looking at the pictures on your bookshelf, and I could see your ass in the reflection when you were changing."

"All this time," he says in mock affront, "all this time I thought it was the front compartment of my boxers that drew you in."

I shrug against his chest. "I'd have a hard time choosing between the two, but if pressed, I'm probably partial to the front," I admit.

"Speaking of hard," he breathes, and I feel his lips and teeth at my neck as he flexes his hips against me.

"Cullen, if you give me a hickey tonight, I swear to God…" I trail off as his lips and teeth find my earlobe.

"I'll behave," he promises, even as he continues to rock his hips into me, his erection growing more pronounced with each movement.

"All evidence to the contrary," I mutter, even as I reach back to palm him.

"Do you want to know one of the main things I always hated about using rubbers?" Edward breathes against my temple, his warm breath puffing against the hair tucked behind my ear.

"Besides the buzzkill of having to take them off?" I ask.

"Besides that," he confirms.

"What?"

"That they make spontaneous sex such a hassle."

"Spontaneous sex?"

"Condoms require choreography," he says, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to my collarbone before he continues speaking. "And unless you're the type of guy who carries one around in his wallet, they involve premeditation."

"I can see that," I say, struggling to maintain some degree of neutrality in my voice even as my breathing pattern changes. I allow him to grind himself against me for a few more breaths, even tilting my hips back ever so slightly to give him a little more friction before I bring my hands to where his still cup my hips, interlocking our fingers. "I suppose you'd better take me home, then, so we can celebrate our newfound spontaneity."

Before I can step away, his grip tightens, and he pulls my entire body flush with his. "I'm not taking you home," he mutters into my neck. "I'm taking you here."

"Edward—"

"Bella."

And I'm done. When Edward uses that voice, low and rough right in my ear, I'm not a reporter or a wife or a mother of three small children; I'm a horny college co-ed with a crush on the fuckhot swimmer with the well-packed swimsuit, and I'll do whatever he wants me to. And the worst part – or best, depending on one's point of view – is that Edward knows this and has no qualms about using it to his advantage. In this case, he's doing so by sliding my hair off my neck with one hand to kiss my collarbone while the other ghosts a touch over the front of my dress, pausing only briefly to cup and squeeze my breast before continuing its descent. I glance around us, but this side of campus is deserted and dark. Edward takes my whimper as encouragement, allowing his hand to slide down to the hem of my short dress. He pauses for a moment before sliding it back up along the skin of my thigh. His free hand is back on my hip and is pulling me back against his still-rocking hips.

"Are you okay with this?" he murmurs as his hand slides inside the elastic of my underwear and the pad of his middle finger finds the bundle of flesh at the very heart of me. He hums when his fingertips come away wet.

"Are you kidding me?" I breathe.

I feel his low chuckle as much as I hear it, his broad chest rumbling against my upper back as he pulls us down together, settling me on his lap facing away from him. I lean back, using his torso as a backrest as I gaze at the glowing Chicago nightline. "It's so pretty," I murmur as I watch the lights twinkle across the water, tossing glitter over the rippling surface of the lake.

"Huh?" Edward's response makes it clear that he's entirely unconcerned with the picturesque panorama of our secluded little spot; instead, he's intently focused on adjusting the skirt of my dress so that it billows around his hips. I rearrange my legs so that my knees are pressing into the cool earth on either side of him, allowing me to take some of my weight off his lap even as I press my hips down into his. He hums in approval, and I hear the sound of his belt being unbuckled; shortly on the heels of that, I hear his zipper and a small hiss that tells me that at least part of him is bare beneath me. As I press my hips down again, I feel his shaft sliding along the now-slick satin of my panties and he groans, his forehead resting between my shoulder blades.

I raise up to my knees just enough to break contact with him before sliding back down and rocking atop him lazily. If I didn't already know I was torturing him, his small gasp would clue me in. "As I was saying," I murmur, struggling to make my voice sound unaffected, even if he can feel the lie in my soaked underwear. "It's so pretty."

"God, you have no idea," he gasps into my fabric-covered back, his large hands tightening on my hips and pulling me down into him.

"Why do I feel like you're not even looking?" I tease, but I lose the thread of conversation entirely as his fingers pull the crotch of my panties to one side and I feel him right there.

"Okay?" he whispers, the pads of his fingers teasing my entrance.

"Better than," I breathe, and it's all the encouragement he needs. My eyes fall closed at the familiar invasion, and the vista fades as I'm completely entranced by the now-familiar sensation of Edward's body claiming mine. In our practiced choreography, he gives me a moment to adjust before starting to move; his ability to do so is limited by my weight atop him, so he's relegated to small thrusts as he pushes and pulls at my hips to guide my movements. I tip forward slightly and brace myself with my palms against his shin bones, using the leverage to rock back against him, take him inside me and let him slip out over and over. His breaths grow labored as I rock back and forth, feeling the warm skin of him sliding along my walls, and when his head hits the perfect spot inside me, his name falls from my lips on a gasp.

"There?" he breathes, but doesn't wait for confirmation to begin pulling my hips back against him in earnest, pounding against the place that will send me spinning.

"God, Edward." I'm starting to tremble, my body beginning to grip his in an echo of what my hands are doing on his legs, and my hips are all but slamming down into his as I chase my own peak.

"Wait," he gasps suddenly, his hands tightening on my waist as he halts his movements and I bite my lip to stifle the wail of complaint.

"Don't stop," I pant, trying in vain to resume our pace, but I'm locked in his grip. "We don't have to stop. Don't stop." I'm begging, and if I could see his face, I'm sure he's smirking through his own arousal.

"I'm not," he promises, but in a contradiction to his words, his body slips out of mine.

"What the—" I'm cut off by his hands guiding me to turn, and I shuffle myself around so that I'm facing him with my legs still spread, my body still pressed to his where I'm humming and weeping and desperate for him.

"I want to see your face," he whispers as he thrusts back into me without warning, and despite my desperation, I gasp. "That's it," he says, eyes flicking down briefly before coming to settle on my face. "I want to watch your eyes when you feel me fill you."

Despite his request, my eyes flutter closed and I resume my rhythm; the peak I thought had slipped away is suddenly within my sights again, and I work myself against him as his words of encouragement do little to break my single-minded focus.

"Good girl."

"Ride me."

"God, Bella. _Yes._"

Heat surges and my body buzzes and my muscles clench and my jaw falls slack as I shatter atop him, gasping his name and God's and cursing as I lose all control.

"_Look at me_," he pleads, his voice at once desperate and dominant and I obey, opening my eyes to see his green ones blazing into mine as he lets go, and I feel his release as he pulses, warm spurts coating the inside of me as he shudders and trembles and gasps through his climax. "I love you," he breathes, still thrusting shallowly in the warm mess we've created, and I groan as the last of my own pleasure fades to a dull hum.

"I'm so in love with you," I murmur back, and while there is a gorgeous cityscape behind me, I am powerless to tear my eyes from his. As he softens and I shiver and we sit wrapped around each other beneath a tree on our college campus, I feel like I'm twenty-two again.

And as he grins up at me, his eyes shining in the darkness and illuminating the glittering light I can't see, I know I'll feel like this forever.

* * *

_A/N: Well, folks, that's it for these two. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your feedback on this, my first "Twilight" story. I've enjoyed my induction into the fandom immensely thanks to all of you and your lovely encouragement. See you in the other stories. xo_

Come find me on Twitter: TheFicChick for squee, snark, and random ramblings generally apropos of nothing.


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